For those of you who read my introduction to my new blog series, you may be wondering to yourselves, "Why is this woman so crazy about crafts?" Well, we, adults, tend to neglect doing "kiddie"things with young children simply because we grew out of it a long time ago. Children learn differently than we do and it's important that we use every resource we can to teach them.
Each week, we have the same things scheduled: body worship, memory verse, Bible story, and crafts. We teach body worship for those who learn aurally, memory verses for those who learn verbally, Bible stories for those who learn visually, and crafts for those who learn physically. We believe in what we teach, we know it's important, and we want for them to understand what we teach.
After hearing the story, the kids have the story fresh in their heads while working on their crafts. The process of making the craft is meant to keep the kids interested and engaged in the story while the end product is a memento of the lesson. The finished product is so important because it can be used to remind the children of the story, God's character, and our faith. This also happens to be the biggest downfall of many Bible crafts found online.
Most crafts that you find online are purely eye candy, or as my 6th grade writing teacher would call it, "fluff" (a whole lotta nothing). They're used as time fillers and don't really teach any truths about the Bible. If crafts are carefully and intentionally planned out, they can be a very helpful tool in teaching children.
The Fall (Genesis 3)
Each week, we have the same things scheduled: body worship, memory verse, Bible story, and crafts. We teach body worship for those who learn aurally, memory verses for those who learn verbally, Bible stories for those who learn visually, and crafts for those who learn physically. We believe in what we teach, we know it's important, and we want for them to understand what we teach.
After hearing the story, the kids have the story fresh in their heads while working on their crafts. The process of making the craft is meant to keep the kids interested and engaged in the story while the end product is a memento of the lesson. The finished product is so important because it can be used to remind the children of the story, God's character, and our faith. This also happens to be the biggest downfall of many Bible crafts found online.
Most crafts that you find online are purely eye candy, or as my 6th grade writing teacher would call it, "fluff" (a whole lotta nothing). They're used as time fillers and don't really teach any truths about the Bible. If crafts are carefully and intentionally planned out, they can be a very helpful tool in teaching children.
The Fall (Genesis 3)
As I mentioned in my previous post, this story was one that I really had a hard time coming up with a craft for. I spent hours upon hours thinking of what to do. The biggest challenge was finding something for the kids to do that would show both man's sinfulness and disobedience and God's justice and grace through the events that occurred.
I decided to have the children make clothes for some cardboard dolls. This was to coincide with the part in the story when Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and realizing that they were naked. They were so embarrassed and ashamed that they made clothes out of fig leaves to cover themselves. God confronts them about their sin and He curses them for their disobedience AND He promises them that though all of mankind is now tainted with sin, He will send someone to defeat our sin so that we would be able to have perfect fellowship with God.
To show this truth, I explained that Adam and Eve tried to fix their little problem of not having clothes to wear by making flimsy clothes out of leaves. God fixed their little problem by making them clothes out of sturdier and warmer animal skins. If God was willing to fix their little problem of not having clothes to wear, God will definitely fix all of our bigger problem of being tainted with sin.
Materials:
- Cardboard
- Doll template
- Colored paper scraps
- Yarn (optional if you want to have 3D hair)
- Glue
- Markers
Directions:
- Print out the doll template and trace the template onto cardboard.
- Cut out cardboard doll.
- Glue pieces of construction paper scraps on the the doll to make clothes.
- Draw face & hair.
I didn't have a picture of my original crafts or the ones that the kids made so I made one as an example. You can use cardstock instead of cardboard depending on how sturdy you want your doll to be.
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