Free Bible School Materials: 2015

Fishing for Christ Visuals, Day Two

Here are the visuals for The Sign of Jonah. Some of them can also be used for the corresponding preschool lesson, Jonah: Obey God.

Fleeing to Tarshish

Storm

Lightening the Ship

Throwing Jonah Overboard

Big Fish

Nineveh

These visuals were contributed by Mary Beth Frey.

Fishing for Christ Snacks, Day 3: Fish Sticks

Wednesday:	Snack
Elementary Bible Lesson:	Raised from the Dead
Memory Verse:	1^st John 4:10
Preschool Bible Lesson:	Feeding the Big Crowd

Key Item: Fish Sticks

Fish sticks are easy to prepare and (at least theoretically) made out of fish. We provided ketchup and tartar sauce for dipping.

Snack Lesson:

[Hold up a fish stick.] What is this that we're eating?

Can you think of any times in the Bible when anybody ate fish? Did Jesus ever eat fish?

In the Bible lesson today, we're going to learn about a time when Jesus at fish, not because he was hungry, but because he wanted his disciples to see him eat and know he was really there.

Additional Snack Items (optional):

To make the snack more substantial, we served applesauce and homemade cookies alongside the fish sticks. We also provided Kool-Aid to drink.

Fishing for Christ Snack Lesson: Day Two: Whale Cookies

Tuesday:	Snack
Elementary Bible Lesson:	The Sign of Jonah: Jesus died to pay the penalty for our sin.
Memory Verse:	Romans 6:23
Preschool Bible Lesson:	Jonah: Obey God

Key Item: whale^[1] cookies

Serve cut-out cookies shaped like whales or fish.

Snack Lesson:

[Hold up a cookie.] What shape is this?

Can anyone think of an account from the Bible that involves a whale, or some other really big fish? One bigger than a person? Perhaps even a fish big enough to swallow someone?

In the Bible lesson today, we're going to learn about a man named Jonah, who was swallowed by a large fish and was inside it for three days and three nights.

Additional Snack Items (optional):

To make the snack more substantial, we served tuna salad sandwiches and carrot sticks alongside the cookies. We also provided Kool-Aid to drink.

Footnotes:

[1]: Is a whale a fish?

In Bible times, yes, the word that we translate fish could refer to pretty much any animal that swims in water. The notion that the word fish should be used only for the ones with gills (and that whales and dolphins are not fish but mammals because they breathe air from the surface) is a modern idea. By the time this modern classification scheme was invented, there were already a number of translations of the Bible into English, all of which had used the word fish in the traditional way^{[2][3][4][5][6]}.

Most modern translators continue to use the word fish, mostly because English doesn't really have another common, well-known word for anything that swims in the water.

We don't know for sure whether the fish described in the book of Jonah was a whale. There are several other kinds of large fish that it potentially might have been; but traditional Bible scholars generally consider a whale (probably a baleen whale) to be the most likely (unless it was a special one-of-a-kind fish directly created by God just for Jonah).

For Bible School purposes, we just use the words fish and whale interchangeably, and we used whatever cookie cutters were handy: some of our cookies looked like (cartoon) whales and others looked more like some other kind of fish. This difference is not important. The word used in Jonah (Hebrew: דָּג) can refer to either a whale or some other kind of fish. (The word in Matthew, κη̑τος, is somewhat more specific: it refers to something monstrous that lives in the sea. This could include whales, very large fish, and various other real or imagined sea monsters.) We aren't told which specific kind of sea creature it was, because that doesn't matter. Whatever it was, it was large enough to open up its mouth and take in a man whole.

Fishing for Christ Snack Lesson: Day One: Chocolate Coins

Monday:	Snack
Elementary Bible Lesson:	The Fish with the Coin: Jesus is God
Memory Verse:	Matthew 16:16
Preschool Bible Lesson:	The Coin in the Fish's Mouth

Key Item: Chocolate Coins

Chocolate coins can be purchased at most large grocery stores and from many other sources. We got enough to give each child a couple of coins with their snack.

Snack Lesson:

[Hold up a chocolate coin.] What's this? Well, I mean, it's chocolate obviously, but what's it made to look like?

Where do you usually find money? At the bank, maybe? In a piggy bank, or safe?

Have you ever been fishing? Did you ever catch a fish? When you catch a fish, does it usually have money?

In the Bible lesson today, we're going to learn about a time when a man named Peter caught a fish and found a coin in it's mouth. That may sound unusual, but it wasn't surprising for Peter, because the coin was right where Jesus told Peter the it would be.

Additional Snack Items (optional):

To make the snack more substantial, we served spaghetti and fresh fruit alongside the chocolate coins. We also provided Kool-Aid to drink.