Bible Class Bit: Daniel and the Lion's Den

Bible Class Bit: Daniel and the Lion’s Den

I am teaching 3^rd grade Bible class on Wednesday nights this summer.  Of course, I can’t do anything without wanting to add my own personal touch to it, so I thought I’d occasionally share my Sunday School findings with you as well!

This week I was supposed to teach about the story of Daniel and the Lion’s Den.  But by 3^rd grade, these kiddos can tell you that story front and back, so I wanted to give it a twist so that they might learn a thing or two.  Let me also give a back story by telling you that last week (my first week with the group) quickly taught me that this is a big group and a ROWDY group!  So as I planned my lesson I had to think classroom management as well as quality lesson.

I found a cute PowerPoint version of the story HERE.  I used that to start the class with, just to get the details fresh in their minds .  Then I found THIS great activity that illustrates the faith that Daniel had.  The children were really interested during this part and it led to some great discussion!  In fact, they were saying things I hadn’t even thought of!

Then I divided them up and put them into 4 different “centers.”  One group was at the back table with me.  We made a VENN DIAGRAM, comparing and contrasting Daniel with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (who we learned about last week- I will try to post soon about the activities I planned for that night).  I let them do the thinking and writing on their own and they did a great job!

The next group did faith charades, which I got the idea from HERE.  They had to draw a story from the Bible from a hat and act it out to their group.  After somebody guessed it right, they had to discuss how that story showed faith.  Pretty simple, but they loved that center!

The third center was simply a crossword puzzle which I created as a simple review of basic facts about the story. I went to THIS website to make my own crossword puzzle. 

For the last center, I wrote the words of Daniel 6:22 on index cards and mixed them all up. They had to unscramble them to make the verse make sense.  If they had trouble, they could look up the verse in their Bibles after a while.

Last night went much more smoothly than the first night.  I feel like they were more challenged , and they were certainly more engaged because they were constantly active and doing something different than what they usually do. 

We’re about to do a summer-long study on the Beatitudes so if anyone has any wonderful ideas out there, throw them my way!  Have a great weekend everyone!