J, K, and the 10 Plagues

I have been rather neglectful of my Bible craft blog posts since Frank came home but now that I have started teaching homeschool pre-school I figured I should probably start again.  The last 2 weeks have been working on the letters J and K and doing the 10 Plagues. 

Gluing Jellybeans onto a J.  We later did a counting activity but eating the jellybeans was still the best part!

A counting activity we did for K

The 4th Plague, don't those flies look menacing!

The 6th Plague: boils, please note the sad face on the Egyptian.

The 7th Plague: hail, although Rebekah hated that we "took away" the styrofoam ball in order to wrap it in aluminum foil, all the kiddos had a great time making it "hail" in the back yard.

The 9th Plague: darkness.  Hard to do so we just did a light vs. dark craft.

The 8th Plague: Locusts.  By far the kids' favorite.  We mixed butterscotch chips, peanut butter, and chow mein noodles together and then made little piles of locusts legs on wax paper.  They were enjoyed as dessert that night!

For the Death of the Firstborn, I decided to focus on the Passover rather than attempt to explain the plague to pre-schoolers.  So, we made some Passover cups, decorated with jewels, and we will use them at our Passover meal in a few weeks!

Christmas Crafts

At the library this season we were able to find several Christmas books, the two most notable were We Three Kings and On Christmas Day in the Morning, both of which are obviously singing books so it is no surprise that they are my girls' favorite books right now. 
As for crafts, because We Three Kings was such a hit I decided we had to do crafts based on those gifts given to Jesus in addition to some others.  The first one was gold.  My mom had some old poker chips which the girls painted gold and put in a clear plastic box and placed under the tree.

I really couldn't think of anything super creative for Frankincense so we just bought some and lit is while we sang We Three Kings together.

We made a homemade spice mixture for our Myrrh and put it in a little organza bag and put it next to the other gifts under the tree.  The myrrh verse is Faith's favorite in the hymn.

These are our hand print sheep covered in cotton balls.

 I cut out the letters for Jesus and Faith glued Cheerios on to them while we sang J-E-S-U-S (to the tune of Bingo) and it helped her learn the J and the U, both letters were previously really hard for her to identify.  We covered a shoe box with paper and then glued Jesus' name on to it, filled it with hay (shredded paper) and placed it under the tree as a manger for baby Jesus.
 

Our final Christmas craft was making a birthday cake for baby Jesus which we enjoyed after our Christmas dinner tonight.  Happy Birthday Jesus!

Pottage of Lentiles

We read through Genesis 25:21-34 over the last week and a half.  Faith really loved coloring this story because there were two babies involved.  She rarely called them both Esau and Jacob, usually it was Esau and Faith or Jacob and Rebekah but she still learned the names :)

The first craft we did was making Jacob's bowl.  We made it from a clay recipe using salt, water, and cornstarch.  The craft and recipes came from http://www.dltk-bible.com/crafts/mbowl.htm   I let it dry for several days before we filled it with the pottage of lentiles later in the week.

 

I found all the ingredients for our pottage of lentiles on clip art and printed them out for both girls to tape (with double sided tape) onto a paper plate.  We talked about each ingredient and then I let them color on te back. 

Finally, we made a pottage of lentiles using this recipe: http://www.hungrybrowser.com/phaedrus/m0712M04.htm

It actually turned out pretty good, although the bowl that Faith made earilier in the week didn't really work well for an actual bowl for her so she used it to feed her Dolly. 

Isaac has 2 As

10/7/12 - UPDATE
For our second go round with Isaac and Rebekah, I found this great song/hand motion poem here and the girls both loved hearing it and acting out the story!  For our first craft we revisited the water pitcher craft from last year (but updated it using old water bottles). 

We also made bracelets like those given to Rebekah by Abraham's servant (although these were made of pipe cleaners and foam shapes rather than gold).  Faith insisted on making 2 each to conform to the story, I just love her little attention to detail!



 

11/6/11 -

This was the first Bible story time we did where a name in the Bible was someone Faith knew, namely her sister, Rebekah.  Although I think it might have confused her at first but she figured out that her 1 year old sister had never ridden on a camel.  It was also great timing because we'd been talking about my ring and how that meant I was a wife, and then we had to point out every one's rings to show whether they were a husband or a wife and Genesis 24:67 states that Rebekah "became his [Isaac] wife" and she was proud of herself that she knew that the Biblical Rebekah must have worn a ring. 
We read Genesis 24:4, 12-26, 58-67.  Our first craft was making bracelets like the ones Abraham's servant gave to Rebekah.  Ours were not gold however, they were beads!

Our next craft was a water pitcher, like the one that Rebekah carried on her shoulder.  I printed out Genesis 24:13-14 and Faith helped me tape it with packing tape onto a water bottle with a pull top, one that she could open on her own.  When she is older and we repeat this craft (and we will because she liked it) I'll give her a pitcher with a screw cap.  She poured her water into Lady's water bowl since we don't have a camel trough! 

Of course we had to make one for Rebekah too!  She wasn't interested in carrying it on her shoulder as her namesake did but she still loved the craft.

Finally, I made a camel out of an egg carton and Faith painted it.  Painting is one of her favorite things so of course this was her favorite craft!  I didn't have any brown paint so I asked her what color she wanted to paint the camel and her answer "yellow and maybe some pink too."  What an awesome looking camel!  http://www.dltk-kids.com/animals/mcamel.htm

Abraham and Sarah

9/30/12 - Update
I added an additional part to our Abraham and Sarah lesson this time around by doing a week of baby Isaac.  We read Gen 18:9-14 and 21:1-6 and made a couple of baby Isaac crafts.  The first was a 3D baby using a tp roll.  Here the girls are cuddling their baby Isaac like Sarah would have done :)

Here they are laughing at him since his name means son of laughter :)

Next we made a simple coloring craft to help facilitate talking about how God always keeps his promises.

9/23/12 - Update
We read Abraham again, Gen 12:1-7, 15: 1-6, and repeated the same crafts as our last Abraham lesson but with a slight twist.  We sang the first verse of the Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob song as well as Father Abraham.  I was so impressed at how much both of the girls remembered about the story and I know the songs help a ton!
For the family stars this time we painted them, pink and purple :)

The Magic Stars went better this time but still not great.  I diluted the tempera to a 1:1 but I think it was still too thick.  Also, my crayon might not be the best so perhaps next time I need to get better wax for this craft.  The girls still had fun and we talked about Abraham and how big his family was so it was a success :)

Daddy provided some science lessons to go along with this story this time around.  One night while looking at the stars, Faith asked why she couldn't see them during the day so he gave them a great and 3 year old understandable lesson the next day.

We've been reading the story of Abraham and Sarah (Gen 15:1-6, 17:1-8, 15-17, 19).  I took advantage of the days getting shorter and one night after church we laid down on the driveway and looked up at the stars.  Faith really enjoyed that.  Unfortunately in the city there weren't that many for her to see but it was a great introduction to the story of Abraham for her.

I cut out 4 stars (one for each member of our family) out of white card stock and Faith covered them with aluminum foil.  Then we wrote every ones name on them.  These hung on the fridge until we sent them to Daddy and every time we read about God telling Abram to look toward heaven and tell the stars if thou be able to number them, Faith reminded me that we had our own stars and that we saw other stars when we laid down in the driveway!

Another craft I was really excited about was Magic Stars, but for us they weren't so magic.  I drew stars with white crayons on white card stock and the theory on the website was that if you painted the paper in black then the white stars would show through.  http://www.dltk-kids.com/crafts/space/mmagic-stars.htm  Well, I didn't dilute the paint with water so we ended up with a black piece of card stock.  I will certainly try this craft again when stars are called for and will follow the directions this time.  Faith had a good time, after all, paint was involved!

Ba-Ba Babel

This week we focused on the Tower of Babel, Genesis 11.  After wrapping birthday presents for Brock & Rebekah we had a large cardboard roll where we drew bricks and glued cottonballs to the top as the clouds.
 

 

We made the tower out of both play-doh and Mega Blocks.

This marshmallow tower was by far Faith's favorite craft.  The marshmallows were our stone and glue was the morter.  After we were done I let her eat one, that is why this craft was her favorite :)

Noah Found Grace

Faith and I are finishing up our 2 weeks studying Noah and the flood.  This has been the first craft series where I've really seen Faith put the story and the crafts together.  Several times while reading our Bible story in the evening she would say "remember Mama, remember when we made...." and here she would say whatever craft corresponded to what we just read (the rain, the animals, the dove, the rainbow).  It was exciting to she her little mind working.  We also sang two songs this week: Noah Found Grace in the Eyes of the Lord by the Statler Brothers and The Animals Went Marching Two by Two which is on an album of kids Bible songs that I have on my iPod for the girls.

Using a medicine and a dropper filled with blue colored water, she made it "rain" on Noah's ark.  This craft was a huge hit!!

I found this one on a blog called "a little mcd".  I cut out blue paper to make the sea and taped it to some white construction paper.  Then out of tan paper I cut an ark on the fold.  On the inside of the ark she put stickers of land animals and then in the sea she put stickers of sea creatures. 

I printed out about 20 different animal picutres (2 of each) and put the pages through my laminator and cut out each animal.  Then I spread them on her table and had her find the matching animals and put them over on the floor rug.  Perhaps the next time this story comes around I will have her build some kind of ark first and then have the kids put the animals from this matching game "in" the ark.

I found this rainbow rice craft on a blog called Toddler Brain.  I took one cup of rice and about a TBSP and a half of vinegar and put them in an old yogurt container.  Then we added the food coloring and shook it up!  I poured out the rice onto a foil lined cookie sheet and baked the rainbow at 170 for about 15 minutes. 

When it was dry and Rebekah was up from her nap we went outside to enjoy the cooler weather and play with the rice.  The girls had a BLAST playing with it!

"And lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off." - Gen 8:11.  Faith loved saying this verse, I have no idea why but the olive leaf was exciting for her to talk about.  The dove hand print template came from dltk-bible.com.  I also found the olive leaf there but in a different place.  I traced Faith's hands and used them as the dove's wings and her top feathers.