Easy Breezy Sunday School: 2013

12/15/13

Christmas Ornaments

(Isaiah 11:1-10 Peace in God's Kingdom, or Matthew 1:18 The Birth of Jesus)

Today's craft is an easy Christmas ornament. I first found it here. Our lesson today was about peace in God's kingdom, and since it's Christmas time, the ornament was a perfect fit.

Materials needed:

Clothes pin pegs (Michael's/Hobby Lobby)

Raffia (any color is fine)

Twine

Wire

Wooden stars (Michael's/Hobby Lobby)

Pen
Hot glue gun & glue sticks (for adult use only!)

Drill, saw & sandpaper - or a hubby with skills ;)

Instructions:

Several steps are a must before class: 1) For each ornament, cut off the legs of one of the pegs to make the baby. The edges will be rough, so a slight smoothing with sandpaper is needed. 2) Drill a small hole in the center of each star.

Everything else can be done in class, but in the interest of time, I also pre-cut the wire, raffia, and twine, and hot glued Mary and Joseph together. Exact lengths for the wire, raffia and twine are not important. Just eyeball it. Notice that Mary and Joseph are staggered in height. I did this at the suggestion of Lisa Brown, who first posted this craft. I like the way it looks.

Give each child one set of parents, one piece of raffia, twine, and wire, one wooden star, and one pen (or other writing instrument).

Ask the children to write their name and the year on the back of the parents. It is best to write this information down the legs of the parents so the hot glue that is about to be applied will not cover it up. My parents had a definite front and back because when I glued them together, the glue oozed to one side or the other. We obviously made the messy side the backside.

Next, have the children put the wire through the hole in the star and twist the ends to hold the star securely.

Now hot glue the twine and the wire with the star onto the back of the parents.

While the glue is hardening, have the children tie the raffia bow around the neck of the baby. Trim the ends if they are too long.

Lastly, glue the baby onto the front of the parents.

NOTE: All images, text and printables contained herein are copyright protected. This material is for your personal use only. I encourage you to print or pin from this site whenever you would like as long as it is credited and linked back to EasyBreezySundaySchool.blogspot.com. Failure to link back and credit my site constitutes a copyright violation. Thanks so much!

11/11/13

Prayer Books

(1 Kings 19)

This week I combined two pins from pinterest to create mini prayer books: The Single Paper Book by James Darrow and the Gratitude Journal from Lulu the Baker. Our lesson was on Elijah and how he prayed to God to let him die so Jezebel would not kill him. We talked about how God does not always answer our prayers. He knows what is best for us and sometimes it is difficult for us to see His plan.

Since Thanksgiving is on the horizon, I thought this would be a great opportunity to talk about the importance of thanking God in our prayers every day for the blessings he has given us. Sometimes it is easy to get caught up in our troubles, or the things we want, and forget to say thank you. These journals can be a way to refocus our prayers.

The students embraced this craft and quickly threw in their own ideas. One child wrote the names of the important people in her life in her book so she could remember to pray for them every day. She titled it, "People I love".

We were so involved in making our books that time ran out and I did not get a picture of most of them. It was an unusually large class this time ( :D Yea!) and most kids wanted to make more than one, so we were quite busy.

Materials needed (per book):

1 sheet of plain white paper 8 1/2" x 11"
1 sheet of decorative paper cut to 8 1/2" x 5 1/2"
1 plain sticker
Scissors
Markers/Pens

Instructions:

Pages:

1. Fold paper in half vertically. Open.

2. Fold paper in half horizontally. Open.

3. Fold each outside edge to the middle. Open.

4. Fold in half horizontally again. With the folded edge on the bottom, cut from the folded edge, on the vertical fold line, only to the next horizontal line.

5. Stand paper up so it looks like a tent. The cut should be smiling up at you (vertically).

6. Pull the fold lines along either side of the slit to open the mouth. (This photo shows the paper rotated from the above pic.)

7. The pages should come together. Crease the fold lines to make the pages form smoothly. This pic is looking down on top of the open pages.

Cover:
8. Open the book pages. Place the decorative paper face down with the open book on top. Using the book as a guide, fold the top and bottom of the cover paper so the book fits snuggly inside.

9. Remove the book leaving the top and bottom folds down. Place the book on top of the folded paper. Once again using the book as a guide, fold the left and right sides so the book fits snuggly inside.

10. Remove the book again. Now insert the first and last pages of the book inside the left and right folds as shown.

11. Between the cover and the pages should look like this.

12. Fold the book in half to crease the cover. Place a sticker on the front and decorate.

10/24/13

Zacchaeus and the Sycamore Tree

(Luke 19)

When I first saw this craft on Pinterest, I knew exactly what to do with it!

This craft screams Zacchaeus to me. Click here to see the source for this brilliant craft, Pikadilly Charm. There are plenty of treasures on their site, so please do check them out.

Materials needed:

1 lunch size paper bag per child
Scissors for each child
Good old fashioned Elmer's Glue (glue sticks do not work well for this)
Construction paper (green for summer tree or gold, red, & yellow for fall tree)

Prep. before class:

Fold back the edge of a piece of construction paper about half an inch. Cut leave shapes on fold line. Keep folding paper and cutting shapes until there is a nice size pile.

Alternative: Pikadilly Charm did not precut the leaves as I have done here. They let the kids tear pieces of paper to use as leaves. Next time, I will do it that way as well. The torn paper also made a pretty tree, and I like that fact that 100% of the project is done by the kids that way. I chose to precut because I was concerned about time. In retrospect, it really wouldn't have taken any more time for the kids to hand-tear the leaves.

Instructions:

1. With Paper bag folded flat, cut slits from the top of bag to about an inch and a half from the folded bag bottom. The closer the cuts end to the bottom of the bag, the shorter the tree trunk will be.

2. Open the bag so it is standing.

3. Twist the uncut portion of bag into a trunk while flattening the bottom of bag to make a platform.

4. Twist two pieces of cut bag together to make branches until all pieces are twisted...

...like this.

5. Glue leaves into place.

10/13/13

God's Gifts

(Deuteronomy 6-10)

Today's lesson is about being thankful for all of God's blessings. Our lives are filled with gifts from God and Deuteronomy reminds us of this. At first glance, it may appear that this lesson will not be specific enough to develop a solid class plan. In actuality, it's wide open for a host of easy crafts.

I have always wanted to paint rocks. And with all the Pinterest posts on painted rocks, I couldn't resist any longer. Since class time is limited, my daughter and I gave each rock a nice coat of bright paint the day before so all the kids would have to do is draw/paint their favorite gifts from God on the rocks. As I've mentioned before, I'm not a fan of paint during Sunday school, so I supplied the kids with sharpies and they worked great on top of the paint.

Materials Needed:

Rocks Paper towels Paint brushes
Acrylic paint Sharpies Cup of water to clean brush(es)

10/9/13

BINGO!

Bingo is an easy go-to game that kids of all ages enjoy. One of my favorite Sunday school resources is DLTK and they just so happen to have a wonderful FREE bingo generator. Click on DLTK BINGO to go there.

I previously used construction paper circle punches for bingo pieces, but they didn't hold up well over time, so I decided to do something a little more fun and durable. I found these happy buttons at Michaels for $5.99 a bag. The screw top container is a recycled plastic trail mix jar and the other one is something I've had for years... and years.

The cute little label is another free download. It can be found at Sister of a Soldier.

Blessings!

NOTE: All images, text and printables contained herein are copyright protected. This material is for your personal use only. I encourage you to print or pin from this site whenever you like as long as it is credited and linked back to EasyBreezySundaySchool.blogspot.com. Failure to link back and credit my site constitutes a copyright violation. Thanks so much!

10/6/13

Balaam's Donkey Sees An Angel

(Numbers 22-24)

I found a really cute donkey craft (Thank You, Pinterest!) that will work for a lot of different lessons. Just off the top of my head, it will work for The Birth of Jesus (Matthew1; Luke 2), Easter (Matthew 21; Mark 11; Luke 19; John 12), and Balaam's donkey (Numbers 22: 21-39). Unfortunately, I do not own the copyright to this craft, so I cannot show you a picture. However, I can supply you with the link! :-) The instructions include a free downloadable donkey image. This is a keeper!

Happy teaching!

NOTE: All images, text and printables contained herein are copyright protected. This material is for your personal use only. I encourage you to print or pin from this site whenever you would like as long as it is credited and linked back to EasyBreezySundaySchool.blogspot.com. Failure to link back and credit my site constitutes a copyright violation. Thanks so much!

9/27/13

Moses and the Ten Commandments

(Exodus 20:1-21)

This week we study Moses and the Ten Commandments. This is an extremely easy craft I like to use because it reinforces memorization. Some kids get really artsy and shade the tablet edges to give it a 3D effect.

Materials:

Brown paper bags or brown wrapping paper
Markers, colors, pens or pencils
Scissors
A bible for each child, if possible

Before Class Prep:

Fold paper in half.
Freehand the shape of half of the tablet on the paper leaving one edge along the fold.
Cut out the tablet being sure not to cut on the fold line.
Open the paper like a book.

Although I used a roll of brown paper wrapping, I drew my tablet about the size of a normal grocery bag. This gave the kids ample space to write out all ten commandments and it makes an impressive presentation this large. I find it easier for time's sake to pre-cut the tablets before class day.

Instructions:

Help each child locate the Ten Commandments in a bible. Ask them to copy the commandments onto their tablet using their preferred writing utensil. This will take a while for most kids, so allow at least twenty minutes for third and fourth graders.

Now the fun part...ask them to wad the paper into a ball. Next, smooth it out to their liking. Voilà! The Ten Commandments.