Parable of the Great Pearl

I really liked using the Godly Play style of presenting the lesson to the two preschoolers I currently have for the parable of the hidden treasure, so I was glad to have a lesson to copy for this week instead of inventing my own. I basically followed the parable as the video which is posted at Living Montessori NOW that I ran into a few weeks back.

The official/original presentation of the parable uses a white circle (like a great pearl itself, shown here), but I used the same background of green felt as my previous lesson. And I used my own 3-D wooden figures instead of the flat pieces sold by Godly Play. I don't think it really matters. Even simple drawn figures or printouts of similar pieces would work. The pearl was one of my own earrings. Again, as in our parable of the hidden treasure, all that the merchant possessed was represented by our dollhouse furniture and merchant was the doll.

After our lesson presentation, I read the account from The Beginner's Bible as well, to give another mode of reinforcement. I allow the children to have access to the materials used for the lesson so they can retell it themselves and further internalize the parable.

We also had a simple snack of round rice crackers, since the shape reminded us of the great pearl. Really, it was the only snack I had on hand, but it fit nicely with the theme of the lesson.

I am noticing that colouring pages are much more scarce and of lesser quality with some of the less "famous" parables, so we didn't really have anything to color this week. For older children, there are some nice activity pages in this booklet from calvarycurriculum.com . But as we don't have an official class outline and they were ready for a snack, things went okay without a colouring page, and they just played until service was done.

Parable of the Hidden Treasure

This week I had just two children, both under 5. I found the greatest inspiration for my lesson this week from the well-known and loved Beginner's Bible we picked up used for a few dollars at a local thrift, and a post from Living Montessori NOW that had a video of a simple presentation of the parable of the great pearl. Since reading aloud to them from the story Bible seems to be not enough material to communicate this parable, and since I don't own and can't afford--or store--the Bible in Felt, I liked this approach with figurines.

The video shows the parable from a curriculum called Godly Play. This is actually the first time I have ever heard of Godly Play, which is an  approach to religious instruction for preschoolers with roots in the Montessori method. It seems very good. I can't get the books through the library and I'm not sure if I would want to own them without previewing them, but it seemed to be an easy enough thing to prepare, so I thought I would tell this parable in this way, using what I have. (I don't think it's essential to have the specific materials that are sold for this.)

I had some green felt left over from another project that was the background, our "field" for the hidden treasure. The treasure was one of my rings in a ring box hidden under the felt, a true treasure. I told the parable using our doll house and the two doll figures. We set all the dollhouse furniture in front of the house to show that the man was selling all he had and then he got the field and the treasure in it. It went over very well. The yard sale concept is one they could relate to.

We coloured this activity page from childrensbulletins.com (below). I'm not subscribed, but this came from their sample for 3-6 year-olds. I plan to use other pages in subsequent lessons, since they're about the kingdom parables.