7 Days of Creation

 

Today's focus was on the Creation Story.  We used an object lesson to aide our group lesson and discussion on the topic.

Prior to class, we prepared seven small paper bags, decorated them with numbers (1-7)--I found some free calendar printable numbers from a preschool site-- and tied them up with ribbon and lined them up on the floor in the center of our circle.  After reading from our text books, we passed out the bags to the students (or pairs of students-we have more kids than bags) and then took turns having the kids open their "gifts" from God for each day of creation.

We used frogs because this is our theme for the year (see our prior post on the "Hoppy to know our Prayers" bulletin board and matching Frog prayer books).

For the first bag, Day 1 of creation, we placed a small flashlight in the bag to represent darkness and light.

For the second bag, Day 2 of creation, we found a piece of sky blue felt and had stretched a few cotton balls and glued them on as clouds and had the felt folded in the bag.  This represented God's creation of the skies.

For the third bag, Day 3 of creation, we had a small container of dirt and a small container of water to represent God's creation of the land and seas. (this bag is ripped, the kids opening this one were pretty eager!)

For the fourth bag, Day 4 of creation, we had some small silver star confetti, and I took two small Styrofoam balls, cut one into a crescent moon shape and the other I kept whole and painted them both yellow.  This represented the sun, moon and stars.

For the fifth bag, Day 5 of creation, we put in a small plastic bird toy and fish toy to represent the fish and birds.

For the sixth bag, Day 6 of creation, we put in a small person (Little People toy) and some animals to represent the creation of man and animals.

For the seventh bag, Day 7 of creation, we put a small plastic bed in the bag (ours was a Little People toy, anything dollhouse size would work) to represent God resting.








For our craft project, we had the kids create Creation Wheels, a copy-printable from the book Bible Wheels to Make and Enjoy to reinforce the lesson when the kids went home.

7 Days of Creation Paper Plate Book

For our first class of the year, we had the kids make books of paper plates, hole punched and tied together with yarn, to tell the story of the seven days of creation.  I found this idea on a website, and modified for our purposes.

On the first plate, we had the kids write "God Made" and their names on the back of the plate. 

On the second plate, we had them color half of the plate yellow and half of the plate black.

On the third plate, we had them make water and sky.  For the water, we had cut out small rectangles (2 inches by 4 inches) of blue transparent wrap (basket wrap from the craft store) and had them use a glue stick to cover the bottom half with glue.  They then placed the blue clear paper, crumpled, on the glue to represent water.  For the sky, we had them color the top half light blue for the sky, and gave each child two small cotton balls to stretch out and glue to the sky for clouds.

On the fourth plate, we had them make the land and plants.  For the land, we used cork shelf liner, cut in small rectangles, approximately 2" by 4") which they peeled off the backer and stuck to the bottom of half of the plate.  For the plants, we had them use a glue stick to attach two fabric flowers from a plastic lei, and had them draw in the grass and stems with green crayon.

On the fifth plate, we had them make the stars, sun and moon.  We had them color half of the plate light blue, and the other half black.  On the blue side, we had used a circle paper punch, about an inch and half in diameter, to make yellow construction paper suns for each child.  They affixed this with the glue stick.  On the black half, we made crescent moons out of more of the yellow circles we had punched, and gave them small silver star table sprinkles to attach for the stars.

On the sixth plate, we had them attach small orange fish, pre cut out from construction paper.  On top of the fish, we had them attach more of the translucent blue basket wrap, crumpled, to represent water.  For the birds in the sky, we had them color the top half light blue, and gave each child a bird foamie (you could also use stickers or just have them draw a bird).

On the seventh plate, we had them draw green grass on the bottom half, and attach animal foamies and a person foamie on the top half to represent animals and man.  Again, you could also just have the kids draw these if you don't have the stickers handy.

On the eighth plate, the kids wrote "God Rested".  They were all hole punched at the bottom and attached with yarn.

Prior to class, we had printed out short narratives for each day and glued it on the respective day.  Link to our document here:  7 Days of Creation Narrative for Plate Backs

This went fairly well, although we had 18 kids and had only prepped for 15, so we had some scrambling.  Upon reflection, we would preassemble the plates, and instead of yarn, use binder rings to secure the sets of plates.  Otherwise, the mix of coloring, gluing and stickers seemed to work well and keep it interesting, while allowing the kids to create a tool to take home to practice retelling the creation story, one of the objectives for their age group in our archdiocese.

Creation Lesson Plan

This week we focused on Creation, that God created the world. We started our class by coloring another image of Mary (see our prior posting for our ongoing Mary coloring book details).

We then read the Creation Story to the kids out of a Children's Bible. This followed with lots of interest, and questions, including "but my sister told us we come from allergy." We think he meant algae, but in any regard, it was a great jumping off point for a discussion from the Catechism on Creation- see 282-289 in the Catechism to discuss with your kids. (a link if you don't have a hard copy: http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc.htm ).

Our craft project for the day was Creation Lacing Cards. We found the activity ready-made in a book called "Easy Christian Crafts- Pk-K" that I purchased at a Christian book store. However the activity could easily be duplicated by creating a half-sheet "card" for each day of creation on card stock, and punching holes in the perimeter with a hole punch. We used regular yarn for the "laces" and covered the ends with tape (like a shoelace end) so that they wouldn't frey.

The book can be purchased on Amazon, here is the link: http://www.amazon.com/Easy-Christian-Crafts-Education-Resource/dp/0887247946/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255217736&sr=8-1

This project was a hit with the kids, however, if we do it again, we will be better prepared and have all the cards cut out and punched in advance so that the kids could just work on coloring and lacing, and bring some type of bag (ziploc or paperbag) to bring the cards home in, along with the yarn.