Select passages in Genesis 8 & 9 (NIV)
8:1 "But God remembered Noah...and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. 3 The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down...The ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. 5 The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and the tops of the mountains became visible.
6 After forty days Noah opened the window he had made in the ark 7 and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. 8 Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. 9 But the dove could find no place to set its feet because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. 10 He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. 11 When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. 12 He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him. 13...Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry...
15 Then God said to Noah, 16 'Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. 17 Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you - the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground - so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number upon it.'
Genesis 9
9:12 'And God said, ...'I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life'."
Memory Verse
Genesis 9:17
"So God said to Noah. 'This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth'."
Activity
I'm going to have the kids use a variety of colors of stamping ink to make a thumb-print rainbow on paper. I'll simply have the kids dab their thumb on one color of ink at a time to make stripes of different colors. We're also going to cut out our rainbows and hang them.
How It Went
Well, we've definately had better activities... Both kids got tired of making thumbprints way before their rainbows were finished to their liking. The stamping ink didn't wash off their hands well, and Kiera was a little upset that her fingers were stained.
I'd also gotten the brilliant idea to stamp onto tissue paper. That way, I thought, the stamping ink would bleed through the paper and would make a design on both sides. I planned to hang them in the window and have them be seen from the inside and outside of the house. I didn't think about how floppy tissue paper is. The ink did bleed through and make both sides pretty, but our half-finished rainbows were much too floppy to hang in the windows without LOTS of tape! (We ended up opting for hanging them on the fridge with magnets.)
There are lots of other ideas below that should work a little (or a lot) better! :)
Other Possible Activities
There are so many possibilities for activities to go along with today's lesson. We did just one, but here are several more...
We didn't do this, because it would be a little "young" for Kiera, but kids could be asked to decorate a construction paper cut-out of a dove with fake feathers, etc. It could even be made out of two dove shapes which were stapled together. The "inside" could then be stuffed with paper scraps or tissues. A sprig of fake flower leaves could even be added to represent the olive branch.
~or~
Two styrofoam balls could be glued together (or use a toothpick stuck into each to attach the two balls depending on the ages of the children involved). Children could then decorate their "dove" with crafting feathers. Add google eyes and a construction paper triangle beak to complete the look.
~or~
If attentions spans will allow for it, take the kids outside to make a scene from today's Bible study using sidewalk chalk. Add an ark, some dry land (maybe with some floodwaters still in the picture), various animals, Noah and his family and a rainbow.
~or~
When Kiera was in pre-school, her teacher often gave the children a shape out of clear contact paper with a construction paper border - in this case it would be a rainbow. She then gave them multiple colors of tissue paper squares (3/4 inch or so square) that they would add to the sticky side of the contact paper. When the tissue paper was added to their liking, she would add a top layer of contact paper to seal in the tissue. These were beautiful hanging in a window!
~or~
Give the kids a chance to play (supervised) with prisms to create rainbows around the room.
~or~
