Showing posts with label Bible story props. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bible story props. Show all posts

Monday, September 21, 2020

DIY Scroll

I wonder if Andrew Clements ever dreamed that there would be so many new words in the English language when he wrote the children's book, Frindle published in 1996. It was a book about how a new word gets acknowledged as a new word. Today we have words and terms that my computer's dictionary doesn't even recognize. Terms like DIY and words like repurpose. I looked it up, and repurpose really is a word. According to the online etymolgy dictionary, it became a word in 1983, long before google became a word.

 

But I digress. This is about repurposing that packing paper that comes in all the online stuff we order today. (I wonder when online became a word.) I left file drawers full of this paper at our old church. The first time I unwrapped something wrapped in yards of it, I thought, "This can surely be useful for something." I smoothed out the 10 foot length of it and rolled it up. Sure enough, I found uses for it. 


 

It works great for making a scroll because it is already wrinkled when you get it. All I had to do was cut it in half to make my scroll the height I wanted. You could add dowels at each end, but I didn't bother for this lesson. We just rolled it up from each end, and viola!...a scroll. 

 

I let the children write the Bible verse on the scroll for this particular lesson. It was when Jesus unrolled the scroll and read from Isaiah in the synagogue in Nazareth. Letting them write it themselves, copying it from a Bible, helped them to connect with the story. When we acted it out and "Jesus" read from the scroll, they knew what he was reading had come from the book of Isaiah because they had copied it themselves.

You can check out the whole lesson on rejection at Nazareth here.

 


I have also used this packing paper to make a cave. Full instructions for that are here.


I could have even made this tree from that packing paper, but I repurposed this black paper from a road we made for a VBS. You can search this blog with the word repupose to see what else we have repurposed. And by the way, in the book Frindle, frindle becomes a word for pen.

By the way, if you are still reading this, instead of getting a new church building, we repurposed these walls for about $500. So instead of a tree today, you will find these themed walls in our kidmin place. Here's what it looks like now:




You can read about our remodel project in several posts I wrote. Click here for one of them.


Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Tube People Starring in Isaac & the King


When I was in college my roommate gave me a note that said, "Procrastination is the thief of all time." Yes, I am a procrastinator. I kept thinking that I would redo the video for this post, but I realize that is not going to happen so, without further ado, here is part 2 of my tube people special.

I must admit, when I rolled these babies out I wasn't sure if they were going to go over or not. After all, "tube people," really? I like them, but I am a bit of a nerd. Not cool. Not a hipster. So I have been thrilled to see that this post has actually been more popular than my green screen post, which is, uh, more for the techy generation. And that encouraged me to do part 2 of this post.

I videoed myself acting the story of Isaac and the Wells (Genesis 26) to give you non-thespians an idea of how to use these tube people for story telling. Basically, you get the narrative down in your mind, and then you can even add lib a little. Like Rebecca telling Isaac that if they have to move one more time she's not coming. Maybe I took a little too much liberty there, no woman would have ever said that in those days, but it does sort of bring Rebecca to life for the kids. Once kids understand a story, you can let them act it out themselves. The key is to be uninhibited.



As I wrote in the original tube people post, you could use peg dolls, Lego people, or many other things to be "people" to act out Bible stories. Below are a few pictures of other ways I have made characters for story telling.

These "tube people" are made with Ian and Sue Coate's images. They are free on the websites listed below.

You can download the Coate's Bible images on Free Bible Images or on their own website, Free Christian Illustrations . Both of these sites are worth exploring for a multitude of good illustrations and Bible figures. You can find them for almost every character and event in the Bible.


The images I used for these are no longer available, but you can use images from the sites listed above
As I became more advanced in making the paper action figures above, I would make a copy of the image and then "flip" it in Word or Publisher. I ran off both copies and pasted them front and back so you could see the figures from both sides. These were a lot of work, but I saved them in a tote to reuse. You could also flatten the paper clip for storage in file folders.

Here I made flannel-graph figures with free printable Bible people.
Same printable people made into "tube people."
You can find the free download for the Bible people printable at The Activity Mom.

If you would like to see another demonstration of dramatizing a Bible event with paper figures, check out my Elijah and the Prophets of Baal post.

Sunday, October 28, 2018

For the Love of Camels and Rebekah


After spending one year in the New Testament, I find myself back in the old with a whole set of new children. I have visuals from some of these lessons, but the children are younger now, so I am finding that I have to change things up.

I always start to prepare by reading the Bible story first. As I read, I try to visualize the story happening in my mind's eye. When I read this story of Abraham's servant going to find Isaac's wife, I was struck by the fact that he took ten camels. The Bible is very specific to mention that. It is also very specific that Abraham's servant watched closely as Rebekah drew water for those ten camels. Why? That was a lot of work! A camel can drink 20 to 25 gallons in 10 minutes and up to 40 gallons in one session. And there were 10 of them. The camels are key in understanding the story.

Pirate Themed Trunk & Treat

Shiver me timbers and batton down the hatch, it's trunk and treat time and have we got a theme for you. Be sure to check the video out a...