Wednesday, June 22, 2016

In the Cave with Dave






This pup tent someone gave me years ago has really come in handy. It has served as the giant fish that swallowed Jonah, the base camp for Joshua during several of his battles and most recently it became
a cave.

To make the cave, I set the tent up about 3 feet into a classroom. I have black tablecloths at home which would have been perfect to cover it with to make it dark inside. However, that is exactly where the cloths were, so I had to improvise and use everything I could find in church resource room. You can see that the old sheets and other things I found did the job below.

Next, I built the entrance to the cave. I found some dowels in the resource room and duct tape. Duct tape is a children's director's best friend. In fact, I think it is indispensable to anyone. I once saw an entire underground station duct taped together in London. As long as it isn't the airplane wing on a
plane I am flying in, I guess I am OK with it. So below you can see how I duct taped the dowels to the door frame.
Next came the fun part. I had all of this reclaimed brown packing paper I had dutifully saved from packages we had received. I crumpled it up to give it a textured effect and then flattened it out. I built the entrance way first. I just draped paper over the 2 dowels and down to the floor. I secured it with some duct tape on the rods and masking tape on the door frame.


Next, I taped 3 long strips together, sketched out a cave opening and then cut out opening. I taped the whole thing up with masking tape. I actually used the blue painters masking tape. It works very nicely.



We acted out the story of David being in the cave when King Saul came in to relieve himself. We used a large, rectangular piece of cloth to make Saul's robe and just cut a slit in it for his head. That way "David" could actually cut off a piece of his robe.

I did not bother to write out a script, we just went over the story in the Bible and then acted out part of it. Since the cave was small, I divided the class in half and we did it twice.

  • David and his men "hid" in the cave. They had fake swords and a pair of scissors.
  • Saul came in and lay down to sleep (I chose to use that meaning for the word "relieve")
  • While he slept (zzzzz....) the men with David want to kill him
  • David tells them not to, that God made him king, and God will take him out when he is ready
  • David then cut off a piece of Saul's robe
  • Saul awoke and left unaware
  • When Saul got to the other side of the room, David came out with the piece of robe and told him he could have killed him, and why was he chasing him down and so on
  • Saul apologized and the scene ends
 I use the Power Point slides from Free Bible Images to go over the Bible story with the kids. As usual, I always add speech bubbles and use the animation features to have the characters carry on conversations.
http://www.freebibleimages.org/illustrations/david-saul-cave/

http://www.freebibleimages.org/illustrations/david-saul-cave/
Then you can discuss David's opportunity to retaliate and why he did not. This story shows tremendous restraint on David's behalf, due in part to his high respect for God making Saul king.

Suggested questions and possible answers to discuss:
  1.  How did David control himself?
  • He trusted God - it was God's job to dethrone Saul
  • He respected God's plans (God had anointed Saul as King)
  • He was not selfish - he did not try to get his own way
  1. How can we control ourselves?
  • Trust God - believe he is in control
  • Respect God's plans
  • Do not be selfish
    • Do not think about yourself, think about others first
    • Think about God's plans and not your plans






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