I'm writing a unit of Sunday School material on 1-2 Kings. Pretty excited about it. I only have eight weeks to teach throught the books, so I can't cover it all. This is how I'm breaking it up.
1. Solomon good
2. Solomon bad
3. Rehoboam and Jeroboam
4. Ahab of Israel
5. Jehoash of Judah
6. Hezekiah of Judah
7. Manasseh of Judah
8. Jehoiachin of Judah
I'm completely leaving out the Elijah/Elisha narratives (I think they deserve their own unit of work) and have chosen 8 representative kings.
The kids' workbooks will be made to look like royal photo albums. Each week they'll have to colour in a cartoon-style drawing of the weeks' king and scrapbook it into their albums with coloured paper, fancy scissors and stickers. They'll also need to rate the king against a Deut 17 / 1 Kings 2 inspired checklist and answer a few questions.
Sound fun? I think so.
Still need to think some more about how to tie it to Jesus each week. The whole series drives quite nicely towards Jesus as the king that we really need... but I'm not sure how I'll express this week to week. I don't want the Jesus bit to be a tacky add on. Perhaps I won't actually go to Jesus each week. Just raise the question of how this king thing can ever work... Ideas?
I'll also have a song and a couple of memory verses.
Sounds amazing. Can you get it published?
ReplyDeletere: Jesus. Maybe you could pick a failing of each of the Kings which showed them to be less than what God expected his ruler to be, show how the kids share that failing in common with the King, and then show how Jesus fulfilled what was lacking?
Maybe that's a bit too complicated and not age appropriate.
I do think you need to get to Jesus each week though.
Thanks Al. The material will be used by at least 3 local pressy churches first term next year. It will be packaged up so that any church can use it. I can send it to you when it's finished if you want.
ReplyDeleteRe. Jesus. The failure thing is a good idea and I'll probably do it at least some of the weeks.
If I can craft a song that says really clearly why Jesus is better than the kings and why we need him, then it will take some of the pressure off putting Jesus in at the end of each lesson - he will be in the front of the kids minds all the time.
A church around here did something similar. The kids had to draw pictures of each of the kings - the bad kings ended up horribly ugly, sad and shabbily dressed; the good kings the opposite! (Prosperity gospel starts young 'round these parts...) But seriously, perhaps a touch of Ecclesiastes and "all these kings had really
ReplyDelete"important" lives, but at the end of the day only serving King Jesus matters..." might be of use.
I like it. And yes, I'd be interested in getting the shiny end result.
ReplyDelete