For the first day of our Problem and the Promise week of advent celebrations, we started with creation. The focus of this week is the problem of sin and the promise of a coming savior, but it's hard to explain the entrance of sin into the world without first learning about creation.
We started by reading Genesis 1:1-2:2 from New International Reader's Version. I had not heard of this version until just recently: it's the NIV modified to a third grade reading level. While I don't love the NIV in general, the NIrV is ideal to read to children: slightly simplified, but not nearly as simple as a Bible story book.
Before reading I had the kids practice shouting "Good!" As we read, each time we came to the phrase "And God saw that it was . . ." I would read it with great drama and then point to them to shout "Good!" I also read, "It was day _____" with great drama and we shouted the number together and held up corresponding fingers.
Sis (age 2.5) lost interest around day four, but Big Brother stayed engaged throughout. I suspect if I'd read from a story book with illustrations Sis would have stayed more focused.
After finishing the story we made creation books. I had prepped before hand by cutting 4 sheets of white card stock in half, preparing various pieces of construction paper, and printing out a sheet of clip art for each of them with birds, fish, and animals.
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| Sis working on day 3 |
We used both sides of each half sheet to make an eight-page booklet:
Cover: "God Made Everything and It was GOOD!"
Day 1: light and dark--a strip of black paper on the white background
Day 2: the water above and water below--a blue strip on the bottom of the page and a cotton ball stretched out on the top of the page for a cloud (I struggled with that one!)
Day 3: sea, dry land and plants--strip of blue, chunk of brown paper, and plants cut from green paper (Sis just glued a big square of green on, so I drew a few plants on it)
Day 4: sun, moon and stars--crescent moon cut out of foil, yellow construction paper sun, foil star stickers (those were a hit!)
Day 5: fish and birds--clip art (I pre-cut these for Sis, but Big Brother did his own scissor work
Day 6: animals and people--clip art and stick figures
Day 7: rest--I struggled with how to represent this, but since we were gluing on what had been created each day, we just left this page blank except for the number seven
I stapled all the pages together, numbering each page with the appropriate day of creation. The kids were delighted with the final results and when Papa arrived home, both raced to him waving the books for him to see. They sat down and went through each page telling him what had been created each day. The next day, I noticed them sitting together as Big Brother read (so to speak) through his book to Sis.
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