Writing on the Wall, Part 2

Here are the directions for making a few more of the props I used when we did the Bible lesson from Daniel 5 about the writing on the wall.

Golden goblets:

• I bought dollar store plastic wine glasses. I also found these gold star plates there.

Picture This!

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I also think pictures make good spring boards for creative ideas.  I tend to believe in the theory of insight learning, where you get that “aha” moment

In the Lions' Den with Daniel

One of the major VBS curriculums for 2015 is using stories from the book of Daniel, so I thought that I better get the rest of my Daniel posts on here. 

We had a puppet stage that morphed from being the fiery furnace into the lions’ den. The cardboard lion in front of the den was an old VBS prop. It was just made from a picture of a lion in a coloring book projected onto cardboard and painted. 

The paper was leftover from some scenery used elsewhere. We kept the paper on after we finished Daniel and made this into a tomb for Easter.

Hint – ever noticed how cardboard warps if you paint it? Did you know that if you paint the back side of your cardboard it will “unwarp” it? The cardboard shrinks when the paint dries – painting both sides counteracts the shrinkage and you will get a straight piece of cardboard again. You only need a light coat on the back side. (We did not paint the back side of our lion and you can see that it is a little warped.)

We used this puppet stage to make the lions’ den, and then we presented a puppet show. Leo and Lawrence, two twin lions, told the story to us of Daniel and the Lion’s Den.  Here is the script if you

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.

Fiery Furnace

As promised, here is the rest of the story on Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego (or “into – bed-you-go”).

I wrote a drama for this story that uses at least 10 people. You can use 20 or more since you need a crowd for all of the scenes. You can also do it with less than 10 people if you allow some people to have double roles. We used our adult teachers along with the students.

Here is the link for the DRAMA.
Here is the link for the IMAGE I used to make the golden idol.

Scene One takes place in the throne room. I actually have created a throne room for other stories, but I did not think of doing it for this one. 

 

Pictured to the left is the throne room I could have used. To make this room, I hang plastic purple table clothes from rods I have installed in my classroom. I will post more detailed instructions next week. The thrones are actually folding lawn chairs (fit for a king and queen -ha! ha!)

In Scene Two, we find ourselves out in the field before the