Two By Two Race

Wednesday:
Bible Lesson:	Sin brings a penalty; Jesus paid our penalty so that we can be saved. (Genesis 6-9)
Memory Verse:	1th Corinthians 15:22

Age Groups:

• elementary
• teens

Equipment Needed:

• strips of cloth (to tie legs together)

Instructions:

Tie children together into pairs (as for a three-legged race), with the left child's right leg tied to the right child's left leg. Tell them that they have to run 2 by 2 to get to the ark (i.e., the finish line). Let different pairs of children race against one another. If there's time, you can even let them switch partners. When time runs out explain that the flood is over and the land is dry and let them get off the ark and go on to their next activity.

Bubbles (Preschool Game)

Tuesday:	Bubbles
Bible Lesson:	Adam and Eve sinned. We all sin. Sin is when we disobey God. (Genesis 3)

Age Groups:

• preschool

Equipment Needed:

• bubble stuff
• bubble wands

Instructions:

You've got a dishpan or somesuch full of bubble stuff, and you have bubble wands, and you have preschoolers, and they blow bubbles, and they giggle, and the run after the bubbles, and try to catch the bubbles, and watch the bubbles pop, and then they blow more bubbles. Yay!

Board Foot Walk

Tuesday:	Board Foot Walk
Bible Lesson:	Humans are sinful and require salvation. (Genesis 3)
Memory Verse:	Romans 3:22

Age Groups:

• elementary
• teens

Equipment Needed:

• Boards with straps on them (see Preparation).

Preparation:

Prepare an even number of long boards (two-by-fours are good) by attaching straps to them in loops at evenly spaced intervals. Each loop should be large enough to accommodate a shoe, and they should be at the same position on each of the boards. We've found that 3-4 straps per board (and thus 3-4 people trying to work together) works pretty well. You will need two boards for each team that will be playing the game at any given time, so e.g. if you plan to have two teams going at once you will need four boards. Wide straps are best for the loops (rather than thin straps or rope), especially if some children might wear flimsy shoes or even flip-flops.

Instructions:

Each team gets two of the boards. Set them side-by-side, and each person puts a foot under one strap on each board, so that the team has essentially two very long feet.

Have them (attempt to) walk together as a cooperative group, from one end of the playing area to the other. Then have them try to turn around and walk back. Race the teams against one another.

Animal Game (Pretending)

Monday:	Animal Game
Bible Lesson:	God created the world and deserves our worship (Genesis 1).

Age Groups:

• preschool

Instructions:

Pretend to be animals together. Let someone pretend to be Adam and guess what animal you are all acting like. Rotate through and let each child who wants a turn pretend to be Adam and guess. Play until time runs out.

Animal Match-Up Relay

Monday:	Animal Match-Up Relay
Bible Lesson (elementary and teens):	God created the world and deserves our worship. (Genesis 1, Acts 17)
Bible Lesson (preschool):	Noah and the Big Flood
Memory Verse:	Acts 17:24

Age Groups:

• elementary
• teens
• preschool

Equipment Needed:

• 3x5 cards
• animal pictures (from the internet)
• clear Contact (laminant)

Preparation:

Print pictures (from the internet) of male and female animals of various kinds. You need two male and two female of each animal. Try to get a mix of animals with obvious gender differences (e.g., peacock/peahen, bull/cow, lion/lioness, cardinals) and ones that look pretty similar (e.g., dog, elephant, horse, squirrel). Cut these out and glue them onto 3x5 (or 4x6) cards, and laminate the cards using the clear Contact.

If you use two colors of cards, you can make one whole deck (one male and one female of each kind of animal) on each color. Better yet, use four colors so each deck can have one color for male and the other color for female animals. (Color-coding the cards isn't necessary for playing the game, but it makes it easier for the game leader to get the decks sorted out between times.)

Instructions:

Divide into two teams. One deck of the cards is used for each team. Hand out the animal cards of one gender to the team members, and set out the cards of the other-gender animals at the far end of the lawn, face down. Each team member in turn runs the course carrying one card from the deck and selects one of the face-down cards at the end of the lawn. If it matches the card they are carrying, they get to keep the pair. If not, they must return the card to its face-down position and return with just the card they brought with them and tag the next team member. Play is finished when one team has all their matches. If enough time is available, you can play it again.

Variations:

For preschool, dispense with teams and the relay aspect: when you blow the whistle, they all run down, grab a card, run back, and match it up with one of the cards at the near end. Have them show a friend their matching pair of animals and name them (e.g., These are lions.). Repeat as necessary to fill available time.

To make the game more difficult (e.g., for teens), you can introduce obstacles for them to overcome, require them to run blindfolded or balancing a cup of water on their forehead, or anything else you feel would make it more "interesting" (i.e., more challenging).

If it's a bazillion degrees out, you can turn this into a water game simply by replacing the run-across-the-field portion with some kind of water-based obstacle or feature (sprinkler to run through, Slip-N-Slide to slide down, wading pool to splash through, etc.).

Ark Building Photos, Part 1

We started by collecting gopher cardboard — over 100 Wendy's fry boxes. This double stack is less than half of the total.


Here you can see one section being assembled.

Three of the sections will be open, i.e., people will be able to look inside and see the animals and stuff. For these three sections it was necessary to build decks, ramps, doorways, fences, and so on.

We started early on the three open sections, so we built them at home. For the rest, we held a workday. Would you believe we got the remaining eleven sections built in under four hours? It was amazing. We built them in the basement, then carried them upstairs to lay them out in the auditorium, where they will be assembled into the final product.

This is how it stands right now. The 14 sections aren't actually glued to each other yet, and we still need to make a roof, coat the whole thing with pitch (black paper), set up the animals inside, and so forth. We'll be working on it some more tomorrow.

As noted in the plans, the scale here is 1/24, i.e., one inch on the model represents two feet on the original. For example, our Noah figureine is three inches tall.
Continued in part 2.