The Good Shepard- Craft and Free Printable Lesson Plan

During the Easter Season, we  study the teaching from the Gospel on the Good Shepard.

I'd like to say the sheep pictured was created by one of our K-1 kids, but I'll confess that this is my work and my husband's work.

We found a cute craft on the Family Fun website using a real brown egg.  For our class, I decided it would be fun to make a version out of a plastic egg.  We purchased larger plastic eggs in the Easter clearance section of the drug store, and a small can of brown spray paint.  We pre-spray painted our eggs and let them dry.  (We ran out of paint and used some acrylic paint of a similar color (hence the multi-toned face here).  We drew on the eyes with permanent marker, and attached the legs by making a small oval out of half of a black pipe cleaner.  We then used two more half pipe cleaners to cross the oval and make four little legs (essentially a stand for the egg).  We then attached the egg with glue, and glued on cotton balls and paper ears to finish the sheep.

We rounded out our lesson plan (I actually made a formal lesson plan, which you can find here or on our free printables page) with a puppet show on the Good Shepard with a sheep and person puppet that we found at Michael's Craft Store, and used some of the other puppets we have in our classroom.  We have been building up a puppet collection using garage sales and the Goodwill and have a wolf puppet in our possession already).  We also used some coloring pages, and a prayer to the good shepard, all included in the lesson plan.

Parable of the Lost Sheep

Last week, we read aloud the story of the Lost Sheep.  This is the parable Jesus uses to teach about his love for his people...if you get "lost" by turning away from God with Sin, he will come find you and celebrate your return once you are found, just like the Shepard in this parable.

Our introduction/gathering activity was the Lost Sheep coloring page from our book, EZ Bible Stories, (link to follow if I can find this online...I purchased this at Family Bookstore).

In circle time, we read out loud the story from our Beginner's Children's Bible which is easy to read and full of colorful pictures.

We then played the "lost sheep" game.  Prior to class, we made up sheep hats for each child.  In past years, we've made them in class, it is easy and fun to do, but the catch is that the glue takes awhile to dry, so this would work well to do on one day then play the game the next day.  To make the hats, we purchased white foam visors, for $1.00 each, from our local Michael's Craft Store.  We also purchased large googlie eyes from Michaels, and several bags of triple-sized cotton balls from the drug store.  We glued the cotton balls to the visors, using either hot glue gun (me) or white elmer's school glue (my seven year old "helper" daughter).  We also purchased a safari style foam hat from Michael's...I would have loved to have a shepard's hat but wasn't able to find one on short notice.  I've posted both the visors and googlie eyes on my Amazon store if you want to order them online.

To play, one child wore our "shepard" hat and the rest wore their sheep hats.  The shepard had to hide in a corner, while one child was selected to be the lost sheep by giving the child a small item to hold onto (we used a dice).  The sheep went around on all fours making "baa" sounds, while the shepard was then released to find the lost sheep.  He or she would approach each sheep and ask if he or she was the lost sheep, and if yes, the sheep would answer with two "baaas" and for no they would answer with one "baa"  This continues until the lost sheep is found, then we had the lost sheep be the shepard, and the former shepard pass of the dice to pick the next lost sheep once the shepard was back in the corner.  We continued until all the kids had their turn at each role.

For our craft, we completed the origami sheep project featured on DLTK kids.  We used white paper, black small puff balls, white cotton balls, and had them color on the sheep nose with pink (pictured right).  We folded the project as a class together, which worked best with our children.

Parable of the Vine and the Branches

This week's lesson will focus on the Parable of the Vine and the Branches. With some quick internet research, I've located a few resources to help us teach this lesson.

Sermons4kids features a nice description of an object lesson involving a lamp.  If it isn't plugged into the wall, there is no light.  Kind of like Jesus as the vine, supporting the branches (us) and helping us to bear great fruit.  We plan on using this for our circle time discussion after reading the story. New Church Vineyard also features a lesson plan with great discussion questions.

For our craft activity, I love the idea featured on Danielle's Place.  The craft is using Grape KoolAid as a watercolor paint to create a scratch and sniff portrait.  We have purchased a tablet of watercolor paper from Michael's, and will have the kids free hand draw a bunch of grapes and a vine on the paper.  For the paint, we added some red food coloring to the grape koolaid to help it look more purple instead of black.  We will then glue on some fake foilage around the vines to give more dimension to the project (we have left over greenery from our Crown of Mary craft featured on an earlier blog posting).  At the bottom of the page, we had the kids cut and paste on (and trace the letters) pre made tracer letter pages stating "I am the vine, you are the branches".  You can make your own tracer pages at www.Handwritingworksheets.com .  We will also print out the entire verse for the kids to paste on the back of the page.

If your kids can't draw the grapes free hand, I found a grape bunch coloring page that might also work for you on First School's site.  This could also be used as an intro activity as the kids arrive to the classroom as a coloring page.