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

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

Repurposing in Children's Ministry

The Fiery furnace lends itself to drama. It is an easy story to bring to life with just a few simple props. I originally was going to make a refrigerator box into a fiery furnace. However, I found they were not as easy to get as I thought. 

Then our short term mission’s team asked if they could set up our puppet stage, which we NEVER use, so they could practice for their trip. They wanted to know if they could keep it up for the TWO whole months before their trip. 

So here I was with this space hogging stage in my Sunday School area and no place for the furnace that wasn’t materializing anyway. 

"What's a girl to do in a situation like this?" I said to myself.

Then it hit me –