Play! Listen! Talk!

Don’t you just love telling Bible stories to preschoolers? I do! Today I told the story of the four kind friends who carried the paralyzed man on a mat to see Jesus. What I especially love about telling Bible stories are all the different ways that kids can experience the story so that it sticks. For example, today each child started off by coloring four paper-doll friends. (The ones I cut didn’t look as good as the ones in the teacher’s guide, but the kids didn’t seem to care!) It was interesting to me how each child tried to find just the right color for the skin of their friends or family members: brown, pink, peach, tan, white and golden! From there we went to a fun jumping game with stuffed animals, and we talked about being kind by taking turns—easier said than done!

For the story, I had gathered every toy person I could find to make the crowd of people listening to Jesus, and then I cut the top off a grocery bag and turned it upside down to look like a flat-roofed Bible-times house. I also cut an opening in the roof with narrow fringes. So when we got to the part of the story where the four friends lowered the paralyzed man down through the roof, the kids could easily visualize what it looked like. One of my favorite parts of the story was the flannel figure which pictured the four delighted faces of the friends peering down from the roof. (One little boy was particularly intrigued with the idea of actually cutting a hole in the roof!)

Talking about being kind is more than a sweet story, however. In the midst of our activities, I heard, “My sister is never kind to me” and “You can’t have that marker. It’s mine!” Real-life situations in which kindness needs to stick! I’m praying that our Bible verse for today, “Always try to be kind to each other,” sticks through the whole week!