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First Sad Day Story and Craft

First sad day story and craft is the second ‘page’ in our ‘What’s in God’s Big Book? ‘ story series. We began with ‘God made everything‘. This story is based on Genesis 3

To tell the story

We had our Big Book with this page inside to show at the end of the story and read. We used props to tell the story – Adam, Eve, an apple (it was just fruit in the story but an apple is easy to take a bite from), a toy snake.

First sad day story

Adam and Eve lived in the beautiful garden. Everything was very good (thumbs up). There were trees and flowers and animals. They were happy (can you look happy?).

God had made everything and he had one rule for Adam and Eve to keep. Just one! He said to them, ‘Don’t eat the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden. If you do you will die.’ They listened and they heard what God said.

Everything was lovely. But then one day a snake began to talk to Eve! ‘Did God really say that you can’t eat the fruit from all the trees in the garden?’

‘We can eat all the fruit from all the trees, except from the tree in the middle of the garden’, Eve replied. ‘If we eat from the tree in the middle of the garden we will die’

‘No you won’t’, said the snake, ‘you’ll become just like God’.

Eve looked at the tree in the middle of the garden. The fruit looked good! So she reached out her hand and she …. picked some of the fruit …. and she …took a bite! (you can ask another leader to play the part of Eve and act this out as you tell the story)

Adam was with her so she gave some to him and he took a bite too!

Adam and Eve had broken the one rule that God had given them. And everything changed. They felt sad. (Can you look sad) They had to leave the beautiful garden. And one day many years later they would die. It was a very sad day.

But God still loved Adam and Eve and he promised that he would send a Saviour to make everything good again.

First sad day craft idea

To make the spiral snake you need fairly sturdy paper plates (you need to be able to cut them but you don’t want them to fall apart when the toddlers start glueing on tissue paper!), tissue paper squares in lots of colours, snake tongue shapes cut out and some crayons/felt tips to draw on an eye. Adults can add the wool/string at the end of the make.

(You can add the string/wool beforehand if you prefer. An easy way to do this is to thread a darning needle with the wool and punch it through the plate. Tie a knot and cover the knot with cellotape.)

God made everything story and craft.

God made everything story and craft for toddler group and preschoolers. This is the first page of our Big Book that we made here.

The Story is based on Genesis 1

There are lots of different ways to tell the story of creation. You can use pictures, paper plates that represent the different days, objects from a storybag (model animals, model trees, fruit etc). When I teach this story I focus on a few details

God made everything by speaking – he said the word and things were made!
Everything God made was very good. (thumbs up!)
God breathed life into Adam and them he made Eve from one of Adam’s ribs. (Genesis 2)

When you tell the story you can count the different days together, repeat the phrase ‘It was very good’ (everyone does a thumbs up) and explain that people are very special to God- he breathed life into them and gave them a beautiful and perfect place to live.

A big book to use as a visual aid when telling Bible Stories. God made everything story.

Some Creation paper plates that are great to use to tell the story – link to instructions

Paper plates decorated as the days of creation from Genesis 1. God made everything story.

God made everything craft ideas

There are so many crafts you can do about creation! Here are a few ideas from this blog plus a link to a pinterest board where I’ve collected ideas

A creation place mat (requires some cutting out – either do beforehand or let older children do it themselves) , creation collage all about people (cut faces from magazines) we printed out a picture of the world but if you don’t want to do that you could combine the sponge print globe with the faces, a sponge print world – we used circles cut from card, blue and green paint and kitchen sponges that were easy to hold. The paint should be fairly thick!

Creation Pinterest Board with lots of craft ideas!

Make a big book!

Make a big book to use at story time! I’m always looking for a new idea for story time. I like something visual and easy to use. I think it’s important to have props that help children and adults listen to the story and enjoy story time. We’ve completed a Bible Alphabet (a story for every letter of the alphabet). It was great having a long story series. So for the next series we are going to think about ‘What’s in God’s Book’. We will start with creation and then tell stories in chronological order as we go through the Bible. Characters will appear, big events will happen and although every story will stand alone they will also fit together as the story of God’s book.

We will have storybags and props each week but we will also have a big book. And each week a picture or page will appear out of the big book.

How we made the big book

We used blue mount board and yellow paper (150g) and pritt stick (a great glue for this as you can move the paper around just after you have glued it. It’s very forgiving)

The book is actually more of a pocket or pouch. The yellow paper is folded and then glued to the mount board which will make it easy to take pictures out of the big book.