For discovery our first week we are going to do a combination of 2 of the activities. First, we are going to have an interactive, guided discussion about the Apostles and the Book of Acts in particular. Because they don’t have completed lessons to share this week, I thought it would be good to give the kids a chance to talk a little. We might tie in a game where anytime someone says a specific word in their sentence, like “Jesus”, we all move one chair to the right. I hope this will keep everyone listening, particularly the kid on my right who doesn’t want to get squished!
We are also going to start memorizing the books of the bible. We are going to start easy and just do the first 6 books of the new testament, then expand from there as the weeks go by. We are going to use a combination of song as well as an activity. For the song, we’ll use the tune to Twinkle Twinkle. Here is a version I found that I think will work well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KrgZ54qPyc&feature=related
I have level 1 this year, so I’m not sure how well the kids can read, but I’m putting the first 6 books on 3×5 cards and handing them out to 4 teams. Race to get them in order with lots of cheering and air high 5’s.
Important note on that last item. One of my big rules in the children’s program is that we keep all body parts to ourselves. This is good advise for 1st graders and is still appropriate for high schoolers. Rather than step in when it gets out of hand, we start with that at the beginning. So instead of high 5’s we do air high 5’s, where you almost high 5, but don’t touch. Goofy, but effective. (I meant that about the activity, not me…).
The Notes are Good 