October Flood lesson

Once a month, I teach Sunday School at CBC.  I teach 1st and 2nd grade girls, and Erica and Amy, the children's ministers, determine the lessons.  Right now, they are not in any certain order.  In September, I taught on Abraham, October I taught on the Flood, and November I taught on the parable of the Good Samaritan.

I'm really satisfied with how my October lesson went.  I taught on Noah and the Flood. 

Before I started the lesson, I had them color the "sides of the ark" which was really just giant paper on the desks.  This kept them occupied before I started the lesson.

I am reading through Long Story Short by Marty Machowski.  It is a family devotional book that I hope to do with my kids whenever they come into existence.  This book has weekly 5-day devos that go through the Old Testament.  He also has a sequel called Old Story New about the New Testament.

I had just finished reading the section about Noah, so I incorporated those into my Sunday School lesson.  I started the session by opening an umbrella in the classroom.  I asked the girls what they would think if I told them it was going to rain in the classroom.  They agreed that would be very unusual and unbelievable.  This is how the world felt when Noah started building his ark.

I taught the first part of the lesson about the wicked world of Noah's time and how big the ark actually was.  Then, I had placed different pictures animals around the room, and I handed each girl the copy of the animals.  They had to look around the room to find the match of that animal like an Easter egg hunt.  The animals came on the ark in pairs.

Then I taught about the animals coming and the rains starting.  I also moved to the computer because there were Bible picture Power Point slides provided by Erica and Amy.  I used those to recap the lesson and also bring them to the end of the flood.  I also taught that just as the ark was the only way to be safe from the Flood, Jesus is the only way to be safe from God's eternal wrath that we deserve for our sins.

In this lesson, even the more talkative kids paid attention, and I feel like the girls understood what I was teaching.