From Noah to Abraham

It's pretty hard to do the story of Noah and his ark without having fun! Mrs. Chu led the story time. When I first gave her the notes last week, she noticed she was supposed to open an umbrella when it started to rain. She said, hey, should I bring my plant spritzer? Great idea!

Of course before it rained we had to build the ark. We put different members of Noah's family to work pantomiming chopping down trees, sawing boards, pounding nails, and painting it all with pitch.

We pushed together the twin beds in one of the dorm rooms to serve as the completed ark. Mr. Lei kindly transported my set of nesting wooden steps over from the daycare center where I work, on his motorcycle. So when it was time for all the animals to board, they were able to climb the steps while imitating all the different animals we'd imitated during the "animal farm" game for week two. There were more animals than people, so some had to hop off and re-board…all good fun.

After our long rainstorm, when the ark landed, one of our moms was the bird who flew out, coming back empty-beaked, then with a branch in her teeth, then not at all. Sigh, I'm just never quick enough with the camera!

Instead of imitating animal actions, for our game this time we first practiced the sounds of various animals. Then kids (and one parent, to make up an even number) drew cards with animal pictures on them. Two names were drawn out of a bag & those two had to come up & make "their" noises. If they made a pair (to go 2 by 2 into the ark, of course), they "won" & got their treat of (of course) animal crackers. If they didn't, they sat back down & their names were put back into the bag. This continued until all the pairs had been matched. (When it started getting a little long, our clever leader started peeking into the bag to find names whose animals would match.)

For our craft we made very pretty rainbows by gluing together concentric circles in rainbow colors, then folding them in half. Very pretty!

That was last Sunday. I never got around to posting last week because of scrambling to get ready for this week. I'd been staying a week ahead BUT because of a Special Olympics event today, we knew a lot of our kids weren't going to be coming. So we decided to hold off on the tower of Babel story, which is much more fun with a bigger crowd, and this week take a peek ahead, and introduce Abraham.

An older gentlemen who lives on the ground floor of our building has taken an interest in our little group, and has provided treats for us a couple of times. This morning he came up with some more snacks and a box full of toys—it was a bit of an interruption, as we'd already started our program, but he paid for that! We convinced him to stay and take part in our Bible story, since we were all girls this morning, and we needed someone to play the 75-year-old male lead. Mr. Poon stroked his snow-white goatee and agreed he was perfect for the part!

It was a swift introduction. Abraham & his wife & nephew & servants pulled their luggage cart around the room, passed through the promised land and got all the way down to Egypt, where Pharoah wanted to take Sarah as his own wife. But the angel of God started beating him over the head with a balloon, so he gave her back! They all toddled back to Canaan, where Abraham & Lot agreed to separate. Then when God appeared to him the third time to tell him he was going to become a great nation, we paraphrased his reply as: "But my wife and I are so old, and we have no children, and now even my nephew has left!" But God said to trust Him, and once again Abraham believed Him, so they shook hands on it.

We'll see how God ends up fulfilling this promise, after we go back and review the Babel story…

Our game today was called "Abraham's journey." We all went out to the stairwell & up one flight of steps. Drew numbered plastic bowling pins out of a bag to determine how many steps to take. Some were forward, some were backward. The plan of the game was that if you didn't end up directly on the landing in front of our door, you were progressing down to the next landing, which was "Egypt," and you'd have to work your way back. But all of our kids were more efficient than Abraham and got to the promised land without detouring so much as a step down toward Egypt.

When they arrived at the final destination, they got a treat of raisins, a product of the promised land!

For craft time we made little covered wagons like Abraham might have used to transport his goods! Both the game and the craft were supposed to be led this time by Mrs. Chu, but instead she "bribed" her ten-year-old daughter Wing Tung to finish her homework quickly (more quickly than she EVER does) by saying that if there was enough time, she would teach her how to be the leader for this morning. So Wing Tung led and did very well at it. She looked happier than she'd been since school started last month. That was neat to see. We'll see how much more we can have her do in the future.