Noah: Advent Week 1

This week we're focusing on The Problem and The Promise.   Problem--sin has separated us from God; promise--God promises to send a savior who well rescue us from our sin so we can be with him again.

We started today by reading the story of Noah's ark from The Jesus Storybook Bible.  

The text does a nice job of focusing on the problem of sin as the precursor to the flood.  It also emphasizes God's desire to rescue and of course the rainbow as a sign of God's promise not to flood the earth again.

After reading, we made stain-glass rainbow sugar cookies.  This activity didn't have a lot of inherent learning value, but while we were working, I used it as a focused opportunity to keep reviewing the key ideas--what is sin?  why is it a problem? what does God promise?

To make the cookies, I made a batch of basic sugar cookie dough the night before and refrigerated it.  I gently rolled some dough into snakes and shaped them into rainbows.   We placed these on a foil-lined cookie sheet and filled in the shape with crushed life savers.

We baked them as the sugar-cookie instructions directed and waited eagerly for them to finish baking and cool.

The finished product had a great rainbow stain-glass effect, but they tasted funky!

The crushed life savers were great before they went in the oven, but melted into the cookie--yuck.  The kids ate the cookie edge and left the middle.  Not sure if the flavors melting together caused the odd flavor or if we over-cooked them and it was a burnt taste, but either way, I think I'll try to come up with a different activity for next year if we include this story again!