Wednesday, September 22, 2010

A Part of God's Plant

I really liked the illustration that the curriculum had you use in the leaf lesson for the biblical concept of "I will grow in Jesus".

It started on Day 1 with you showing the children a healthy green plant.  I forgot to get a house plant (but probably for the best because I kill house plants) so we decided to find a nice plant outside near the schoolhouse.


We found a nice little plant growing at the base of one of our trees in our yard.  We talked about the leaves on this plant and how they are happy living on the plant.  Except for one little leaf who decided that he did not want to live on the plant anymore.  He wanted to be free and doesn't think he needs the plant and wants to go somewhere else.

He decided to live in a dark area of the schoolroom.

 (you can't see the leaf in this picture...it is on the floor between the desk and the filing cabinet)

I then explained to the kids that God is like that plant outside and we are like the leaves.  If we are God's child then we are like a leaf that is growing on the plant and God gives us what we need.  but some people don't want to obey God and want to live without God.  They are like the leaf that decided to live in the dark shadow.

During the 6 days of the lesson we would check on the plant outside and observe how well all the leaves were doing.  We would then check on our poor leaf that decided he could do better by himself.

By day 5 the leaf had withered away to almost nothing.  We focused on how, just like a leaf needs food and water to grow and needs to stay with the plant, our spirit, the 'real' us, needs to stay with Jesus to live and grow.  I explained how the bible is like our 'food'.  We read several bible passages that went along with this concept (Psalm 1:1-3, Jer 17:7-8, and 1 John 5:12).

I think Seth did a good job of grasping this concept.

We also sang the song "Read Your Bible, Pray Every Day".  Seth was excited about this because he remembered the song from Vacation Bible School this summer.  We had a lot of fun acting out growing and shrinking!  Alyssa was even trying to do the actions with us :-)

My prayer is that Seth will remember these lessons as he continues to grow!

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