Noah: The Flood Begins ~ Genesis 7

Scripture Reference
Genesis 7
"The Lord then said to Noah, 'Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation.  Take with you seven of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.  Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made.'
And Noah did all that the Lord commanded him.
Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth.  And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood.  Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah.  And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth. 
In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month - on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.  And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights. 
On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark.  They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings.  Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark.  The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah.  Then the Lord shut him in. 
For forty days, the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth.  The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water.  They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered.  The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than twenty feet.  Every living thing hat moved on the earth perished - birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind.  Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died.  Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; men and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds of the air were wiped from the earth.  Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark." 

Memory Verse
"So God said to Noah, 'This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth'." Genesis 9:17

Activity
Andrew really enjoys doing the activities we've done before.  He wants to do them again and again...  This morning he woke up, went to the table and said, "Make boat!  Make boat?"  So today's activity is designed with repetition in mind, meaning that I wanted something Andrew could work on day after day.  I'm going to have the kids cut ark shapes out of brown paper grocery sacks. (Andrew's will be done for him already.  Also, construction paper would work, but we're out of brown so I'm improvising.)  Inside we'll draw the three levels (Genesis 6:16) and add in a few animals.  We'll need to cut two ark shapes for each child, because I'd like the arks to open as a book would to reveal the animals inside.  Each animal will have a piece of tape on the back so that it will stay in place once it's put onto the ark, but the kids will be able to move them a few times.  I'll just replace the tape as needed to keep them sticky.  (Sticky-tack would also work, but Andrew has a "thing" for putting it into his mouth.  I guess he wants it to be gum...) 
I'm also planning to make a sort of scene on a dry erase board that we have.  I'm planning to use a large sheet of blue paper (or white paper that I've colored blue...I'll have to see what's in the cabinet!) to make flood waters that we'll lift to cover the trees and mountains.  The ark will be attached to the top of the "water" so that it lifts as the waters rise.  **

How It Went
Andrew enjoyed coloring his ark and putting the animals in, though he's still very preoccupied with the scissors! (He's using "edging" scissors because they don't cut things quite so easily.)  Kiera thought that making the ark book was "okay", but she was more interested in the part of our activity where we made the ark rise above the mountains on the floodwaters.  I think the thing that they both liked best was coloring the dry-erase board scene completely blue to show the flood waters (their idea).

Andrew's Noah book, with Kiera's below.

 

If today's activity book were done using all felt pieces, it would be more durable for continued play (it could be used as a busy bag), and it would eliminate the need for scotch tape - the felt animals would stick to the felt ark on their own. 

**Today's activity is fairly large and a little time consuming.  It could easily be dissected and some parts of it could be done while skipping other parts.