The Writing on the Wall, Part 1

As promised, here is the writing on the wall lesson I did from Daniel.

This  Bible story is one of my favorite ones to teach. My helpers enjoyed it as much as the kids did. We acted out the story, complete with snacks and drinks. I find it is always best to tell the story first, or look at the passage in the Bible , before acting it out. Hearing the story first gives the kids a base to understand what they are doing. Acting it out then becomes a way to bring home truths from it, and helps them to remember the truths better.

I made up a great power point complete with writing which appeared  on the wall. I used a “wipe” effect in Power Point animations. It is a little tricky to explain. I use Free Bible Images for my power points. They have power points for almost every story in the Bible. The writing on the wall is found here. 

You can do a lot of cool things to a Power Point slide with the animations features. It is worth your while exploring these if you use power point much. If I get permission to share the slides I have altered, I’ll do a blog on this someday.

So, after we watched the Bible story in Power Point, then we acted it out. I had a cool room set up - my “throne room” minus the thrones and plus a “banquet table.” I got everything at the Dollar Tree (plates, goblets, and purple tablecloths).

The kids came in for the “banquet,” and one of them was chosen to be “King.” We put a crown on his or her head and placed a royal robe on him or her. Then we served lemonade and a snack using plain goblets. We instructed the King to demand that the gold goblets be brought in. My helper really hammed this up and went running to fetch the tray of gold wine glasses. 

No sooner were the glasses passed out than  I gasped, screamed and pointed to the wall. I had rigged the purple curtains by taping fishing line to them so that they could be drawn back. When they were drawn, a hand that had written on the wall was revealed. Of course , no one was freaked out, but they all wanted a chance to be the king. So we re-enacted it over and over again. 

We took two weeks to do this as I had a great craft to go with it as well. We did a really cool "magic window" craft the second week. Check out my blog post with the instructions.

The "hand" doing the writing is a clear food service glove stuffed with fiber fill and then taped into the cutoff sleeve of a sweatshirt.You can fins instructions for making the golden goblets and the "hand" here.