Ruth Gathers Wheat

Ruth

In Bible class today, we acted out the story of Ruth.  Before class, I had made a bunch of wheat bundles like in the bottom picture.  I got tan colored butcher paper and shredded it in a shredding machine.  Then I grabbed a handful, made a cluster, and tied it with a string.  Then I cut the tops and the bottoms to be semi equal.  These stand up pretty easily.

Before the kids came into class, I set out the bundles all over the carpet like in the top picture.  I made sure there were extra pieces tiny pieces of "wheat" by shaking the bundles and letting small pieces fall out.

When telling the story, some kids were harvesters and picked up the larger bushels of wheat.  Then some kids pretended to be Ruth and picked up the leftovers to take to Naomi.  I had little paper baskets for them to collect their grain in.  I let them give their grain to Naomi by emptying their baskets.

For a take home, I gave each child a large piece of Shredded Wheat cereal on a plate.  I made sure each child got plenty of crumbs.  I let the children pretend to be harvesters and put their large bundle of wheat in their paper basket.  Then they had to use their fingers to collect the rest of the grain to put in their basket for Ruth. That took some time and was not as easy as they thought it would be.  We discussed how gathering leftovers might have been difficult for Ruth too.

These four year olds really enjoyed this lesson.