We made these over two weeks at our after school club. The first week we made the basket and baby Moses and today we made the hand shaped reeds and tissue paper water. The four year olds did a great job of using scissors. I never use scissors with preschoolers but the children today are already in year one so it’s good for them to use their skills.
At toddler group we are using the Go Teach Book No 5 for under three’s. Last week the story was from Joshua 2 – Rahab and the spies.
We took a break from using items from a storybag and had a duplo city instead. This was hidden under a cloth all morning so as not to spoil the surprise. Jericho is made with duplo and the people are from duplo and happystreet. (Not historically correct but the right number and all I had!) The red cord is a piece of wool.
Our craft was red collages – very easy. We had tissue paper, crepe paper, wool, material, sugar paper and red shiny paper to glue any way the children liked onto white sugar paper. Lots of different textures and shades of red. One toddler in our group loves the opportunity to enjoy the feel of all the different textures letting them fall through her fingers like confetti.
Learning the Books of the Bible is really useful – just having an idea of whereabouts a book is and what kind of book it is can be helpful when we are finding our way around God’s Book. For a brief description of the Old Testament books take a look here.
For the New Testament the pegs work really well as a reference and by playing games with the pegs – mixing them up and putting them back in the right order – children can begin to get a feel for the order.
The pegs are wooden attached to a wire coat hanger – the names of the books are written on with biro and then a colour to represent the NT is added at one end and then different colours for categories at the other end.
Categories
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John – the gospels or life story of Jesus.
Acts – history of the early church
Romans through to Jude – letters. Explain that some of the names of the letters refer to where they were sent (e.g Philippians). Others refer to the name of the person who received the letter, (e.g I and 2 Timothy) while others refer to the person who wrote the letter (e.g 1,2.and 3 John).
Revelation – prophecy relating to end time events.
We are doing a series of bible stories all about ‘People Jesus helped’ from the Go Teach Toddlers Book 4. One of the suggested activities was to make a doll’s hospital so we had a go. It’s quite basic – a doctor’s play set, couple of dressing up clothes, dolls, dolls clothes and bedding, toy phone and a few beds made from show boxes. We moved some of our tables into an L shape and put up a sign. It was great to see lots of play going on with parents/carers chatting to their toddlers in the doll’s hospital. We won’t do this every week – it seems that having a new role play area makes more chat between adults and the children possible.
This is a very easy palm leaf craft. The basic shape is cut from construction paper (5 at a time). Then there are two shades of tissue paper, squares of green construction paper and some shiny cellophane – this was not great to cut up as it clings to you! It’ll look nice and I like to use stuff up – this was wrapping for a bunch of flowers. The wax crayons are shades of green.
As part of a series for older children – 4 years plus – we’re taking a look at the beginning of the Bible. Would you ‘Adam and Eve it?’ is rhyming slang for would you ‘believe it?’
The Bible, God’s Word to us is true. We want to encourage others to believe God’s words.
Genesis 1 tells us that God made everything good. It was a perfect world with everything working in harmony. Clearly that isn’t a picture of our world today. So what happened? Genesis 3 tells us. The people that God had created believed the words of the serpent rather than the words of God.
A craft idea – serpent made from a paper plate.
Other resources
