Sunday School on Friday – Noah’s Ark

I have found that M seems to gain more from our Bible story times when we do activities and talk about the story a little bit before actually reading the story from one his children’s Bibles.

So, on Thursday I let him watch a short (3 minutes) video about Noah’s Ark on his Read And Share Toddler Bible DVD. He really enjoyed this.

There are so many inspiring ideas online for a Noah’s Ark theme. We almost weren’t able to fit everything in!

Friday morning when he woke up, this was waiting for him:

The printout is from Making Learning Fun (a fantastic site, by the way).

M got right to work:

Later we talked about all the colors of the rainbow as we did a little color mixing:

Next we had fun playing “Sink or Float?” in our kitchen sink:

M came up with some pretty interesting things to drop in. :) We made a little boat with a sponge, straw, and foam sail, and tried to see what we could carry on it and what would make it sink.

We talked about the ark and how God kept Noah, his family, and the animals safe on it.

I found these story cards on Sparklebox (another fantastic site!). M has never done sequencing with story cards before, and I wasn’t sure he was ready for that challenge, so I simply told him the story with the cards, and then we did it a second time while he told the story (with me giving some prompts).

I made up some game mats by printing this template out on colored construction paper, and we played an animal matching game. The game we used is one we’ve had for a while, but as we found matches, we got to put our animal couples on our arks. Whoever had the most animals on his/her ark won. :) Very simple, I know, and it was really unnecessary to print out ark game mats, but simple things can make a difference. M felt like it was a brand new game. And he won. ;)

We didn’t end up actually reading the story about Noah and the Ark from M’s Bible until bedtime that evening!

I had a craft planned, but we just didn’t get to it. However, I do still plan to do it with M, and I’ll create a separate post for it. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun!

Have a beautiful day! :)

A Little Wisdom from some Wonderful Women

(Ah, I love a little alliteration!)

In my post earlier today, I meant to include some links to other blogs that have given me food for thought over the past couple of weeks, as I tried to come up with the right words for what I wanted to say.

However, at the time I couldn’t find all the links, so I published the post without them.  It is *Thursday Thinking* after all, and it would just be weird to post it tomorrow.  I only get one day a week when I really get to think about things, you know. ;)  That is actually more true than you think.

Here are the links I wanted to share with you – each one is a good read, and I think these women have some real wisdom to share.  Enjoy!

A post about our duties by Jen at Conversion Diary

A post about being prepared for the day as a mother of small children by Amanda at Taking Off My Shoes

And a hilarious yet insightful post about motherhood by Organizing Mommy at Organized Everyday

By the way, I’m putting this in a new post because I just can’t stand the way a post will show up in my Google Reader 5 times because it keeps getting edited.  So annoying!

Have a beautiful day!