Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Epiphany

Back to getting caught up.  We've reached January!  I wanted to share one of our Bible story lessons that really took hold.  Each week we learn one Bible story--each day either reading it from a Bible story book, the Bible, acting it out or doing a craft. At first K was a little impatient with the idea of doing just one story a week--she wanted to do a different one each day.  But to really learn something, you have to take time with it.  I've seen the benefit of taking this time and am glad to have the chance to help her absorb and learn the Bible stories and truths.

Anyway, for the story of The Wisemen I cut a piece of butcher paper and drew a long winding path leading to a simple Bible-time house.  We used the wisemen from one of our nativity scenes to act out the story.  I also used a toy castle and king to be Herod in Jerusalem.  T, who always joins us for Jesus Time, saw me get out the castle and was sure I needed the empty toy stable and an angel, too.  I hadn't thought of using those and they actually worked really nicely to explain how Jesus was a little older and Mary and Joseph had moved into a house by now. 


In addition, I made the star to be a separate piece.  We held it above and before the wisemen as they traveled along so they could follow it.  After they visited Herod, we stuck the star to the paper above the house because the text says "after they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was.  When they saw the star, they were overjoyed...." (Matthew 2:9-10).  Then we used the angel to tell the wise men to go home a different route.

 


Something else I did to help explain the wisemen's gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh was show a gold necklace chain, a few ancient sticks of incense that B found, and a tiny colorful perfume bottle.  I put them all in a "treasure box"--the velvet-covered box for our wedding knife and server.  (Knife and server removed, of course.)  K loved having these visuals to play with.  She also brought the copy of the song "We Three Kings" I'd printed out to the story area.  You can see above her standing on the song with the treasure box behind her.  Both K and T much enjoyed re-enacting this story later in the day.

1 comment:

Dana said...

Wow, Rena. She's never going to forget that. And you'll probably remember it every Epiphany now!