God's Work (Lame Man)

This week the two evening Backyard Bible Clubs began!  Because Pentecost is such a key event in the book of Acts, my evening BBC had that lesson (God's Power), while my morning BBC continued with Acts 3-4 (God's Work).  In about 3 weeks, all the groups will be on the same lesson. 

This week the playground time and group game time was all about Frisbees.   I had set up a Frisbees golf course.  We had anywhere from 3 holes to 9 holes depending on my space. The kids teed off at the numbered cones.  The holes were numbered buckets. We had Frisbees flying all over the place.  One was even lost in the Rhubarb patch!  A number of years ago, I had crocheted a number of Frisbees.  These seemed to work the best AND didn't hurt if they hit someone.

Our craft for this lesson was a Lame Man Puppet. The kids colored the head, arms and feet with markers.  They loved using markers.  I had green faces and red faces and stripped arms!  Their favorite colored "bodies" were blue.  It is fun to see the creativity in the kids as they complete the crafts each week. 

Then it was "tent" time.  The kids are really getting the words and the motions to our songs.  I try to use American Sign Language as much as possible for the motions.  In fact this week, when we sang "Give Thanks" a student told me "When we do this (she should me the motion for thanks), that means thank you in sign language."  All of our songs this summer are
also Bible Verses.  And the kids are beginning to pick up on this fact.  This week's memory verse is 1 Chronicles 16:8-9.  The song that goes with this verse is "Give Thanks".  The memory verse activity we played this week was called "Which Direction?" I had a student roll the direction die.  Whatever direction was on top, that is the direction we needed to face as we said the verse.  I had about 6-7 students roll the die. 

This week's Bible lesson is found in Acts 3-4.  The words of the day were honor and miracle. The kids heard how Peter and John met a lame man while going to the temple in Jerusalem.  This man had never, ever walked AND he was over 40 years old.  He was sitting by the temple gate begging.  When Peter saw him, he said, "Silver and Gold have I none, but in the name of Jesus of Nazareth get up and walk."   Then he helped the man stand up.  When the man realized he could stand, he soon was walking, leaping and praising (honoring) God for performing a miracle in his life.  This commotion quickly drew a crowd.  Peter seeing the opportunity, preached a sermon to the crowd.  He gave God the honor for healing the lame man.  Then he told them about Jesus and how He wants to heal them from eternal death.  So just like the lame man and Peter, we need to honor God for what He has done in our lives. 

After snacks, we played some more Frisbee Games.  For my Monday Morning group, we played Frisbee Baseball.  It is played just like regular baseball, except the batter throws the frisbee instead of hitting a ball with a bat.  I was impressed how far the kids could throw.  Some of the best throwers were the younger kids!  For the rest of my groups we played, Frisbee Bocce.  The players form a line.  The first person rolls a tennis ball .  Each player then throws their Frisbee trying to land on the ball.  Whoever is closest to the ball gets 1 point.  If a player lands on the ball, they get 2 points.  We played until everyone had a chance to throw the ball.  For some of the groups, we also played Frisbee Dodgeball using my crocheted Frisbees. 

For the missionary story, we heard about William Tyndale. The Bible was originally written in Greek and Hebrew.  So how did it get translated into English?  William Tyndale went against King Henry VIII and the church leaders at the time, to give us the very first English translation.  Because it was against the law to translate the Bible into English, William had to flee to Europe to do his work.  He smuggled the English Bibles back into England through bales of cotton.  Although he was burned at the stake for his work, two years later King Henry VIII made a new law:  every church in England had to display an English Bible.  So William Tyndale's life was not lived in vain. 

Our review game was called "Give and Take".  The students were divided into teams.  I asked a question to the first child in line of one of the teams.  If they answered correctly, they could turn over a red and blue cap.  The red cap had point values on them.  The blue caps either said "give" or "take".  If it said "take", then that student would take the points for his team.  If the cap said "Give" then the students would give the points to the other team.  The team with the most point won.  Those team members each received a Bible Buck. 

After club, the students got a chance to spend their Bible Bucks at the Club Store.