Summer: Jonah

If there's one story I remember from Sunday school growing up, it is Jonah. Probably Jonah and Noah are the two most famous in my memory, at least from the Old Testament.

Unlike many other scripture narratives, the story of Jonah is meant to be more light-hearted, even absurd, which is the interpretation given by a storyteller on this blog (recommended).

I really wanted to tell this famous story, but I did have a hard time with it, because it is part of the Godly Play® regular curriculum and I do not own the books for any of them. (They also don't come with patterns, unlike Young Children and Worship). I also don't use it in my regular schedule. The story is totally not new, but it was new for us.

I did end up using the basic GP story, but I learned it from watching a couple of other storytellers. I really liked how this woman used her hands.

I also made the pieces I needed myself. The waves were the hardest part to get, but eventually I found a clip art piece, and it worked perfectly.You are welcome to the patterns for Nineveh and Jonah as well.



We used a bright turquoise/aqua underlay and a rust-colored shore. It resembled the maps in the back of many Bibles, which is why I think we were drawn to choose it over a darker blue. Our waves are also aqua. It has a very beachy feel.

One thing that draws children to this story is putting Jonah in the fish and spitting him back out again. Godly Play has a very nice wooden fish, but we couldn't make that with our jigsaw. I did find a nice pattern, though and made our from denim off a pair of unrepairable jeans. It was tricky to sew the mouth open (not part of the directions) but it worked. I got my idea from the post linked here, but the tutorial here has a pattern.

For Jonah's "mercy" plant, I used an aquarium, weighted tuft of grass. Just the right size for our grumpy prophet.

The children did make a comment about how Jonah was a giant compared to little Nineveh, but given the scale of the whole story I think it was not a huge difficulty for them. The story is from Jonah's perspective anyhow, so if he, being up on the hill outside the city, was looking down on the city, it would be "smaller" from his vantage point.

This was a fun story to tell and wonder with the children about. It has seen alot of use since appearing on our shelves, especially by the younger children.

Summer Enrichment and Baby Moses

I have had many, many thoughts about how to fill in the Sundays from my scheduled curriculum until the start of the next year's cycle in the middle of August. There were several possibilities I explored, but in the end, I decided to use the four stories that were only lacking in one existing in-print story script with figure patterns. Life in summer is so busy, and this was the simplest path. So for the four weeks we have available we will be covering Moses and David in the following summer lessons:

• Baby Moses
• Moses and the Burning Bush
• David the Shepherd Boy
• David & Goliath

I was so thrilled when I found I Wonder... More Stories for Children and Worship when I was in the initial stages of considering whether or not to adopt the sensorimotor curriculum (since financially it seemed to be potentially out of our budget ability as a baby church), and I ended up ordering it. 

There are many "extra" stories in this book, as well as a sample schedule covering a several year span to incorporate them. The only story not in this line-up is Baby Moses, but I felt confident someone had already done it, so I searched, but again, not much was around. 

I found some wondering question samples in one spot and a couple of simple script ideas in another, but nothing concrete. So, as is my custom, I made one myself. Using patterns in the back of I Wonder... I sketched figures. From the sample story lines I designed a script. I am making them both available to you here to freely use in your homeschool, Sunday school, or worship center. If you'd kindly link back to this blog, I'd be grateful. Enjoy!!

Baby Moses figure patterns

Baby Moses script

Update: June 2015

The story of Baby Moses has been one of the most used stories in our classroom over this past year. I don't know if it is because it is about a child, because it is so "famous", because they really like the little plants to put in the sand or putting the baby in the basket and into Pharaoh's daughter's arms. Whatever the reason, I am so pleased that it was well-received!

I am also thinking of setting out this craft as an example for inspiration of those choosing to do artwork in response time. Enjoy!

Parable of the Insistent Friend

So I had the hardest time getting components and inspiration for this parable. Pickings are rather slim for the less than famous stories of Jesus, and even artwork is lacking compared to, say, last week's. I managed to find a few things, but I had to make up some of my own parts, which, I guess is not terrible.

Story
I used the dark blue felt underlay from last week's parable, since this also takes place at night. I had several wooden figures: a man, woman and three or four children who were all laying in the bed from our doll house. These were set up inside their "house" along the path that was spread over the underlay. Then I had another man figure who was the friend, standing just outside the door. The whole "house and door were just our parable box because I couldn't come up with anything else.

I told the parable using the basic text from Luke 11, then asked lots of questions at the end. You can get the script here:

script: Parable of the Insistent Friend

Song
After the lesson presentation, we sang "Ask, Seek and Knock" by WonderKids, using simple hand motions. One hand was the door and we knocked with the other hand. I sang it with them and it was very quickly learned.

Craft
For our craft we made a moving coloring picture that I ended up creating myself from various components I found online. The friend's hand knocks by the action of a brad attached at his shoulder, and the door is openable as well. The template is available through the link below.

 

download craft template

Coloring

Here is another coloring page that I cleaned up and made available, but they were more interested in the craft, so we did it and I sent the other one home with them.

Video

A nice little animation of this parable was on YouTube, but it was in Spanish, and it was made to go along with the song that was written just for the animation. So I spliced it with "Ask, Seek and Knock" and it was perfect.

Snack

Since preparing went slowly and I ended up spending a while on designing and assembling the craft, I didn't have a snack. However, I probably would serve biscuits or rolls, since the parable ties it in, and I would serve it in a small bread basket.