Handwriting on the Wall Craft

Handwriting on the Wall

Daniel 5

For this craft, I printed the page with the picture of the king and the wall. Then I put a page (which contains the words Mene Mene Tekel Parsin) under the first page so I can use it as a pattern.  Using a white crayon, write the words "MENE MENE TEKEL PARSIN" in the box.  Make sure you press really hard. 

I tell the story until I get to verse 5.  Before reading verse 5 (the hand appears and writes on the wall), I tell the children that I forgot to put color on their pages and I need help finishing that part.  I tell the children that they need to first paint the wall (the rectangle) and that we will paint the king later.  As they watercolor paint the wall, letters and words begin to appear! After they have finished, we finish reading and telling the rest of the Bible story. 

For the younger preschool children, I used Elmer's White Glue and traced the letters using glue on the page that has MENE MENE TEKEL PARSIN on it. I let it dry. I make one page like that for every child.  

I give the children a page with the words and then lay the picture on top. They use crayons to color the wall.  As they color the wall, the words will magically appear.  (Like a penny rubbing.)

Click on photo to get the pattern.

Spoon Lion

Daniel and the Lion's Den

Daniel 6

The children made these lions from plastic spoons.  I had pre-cut the yarn. The children drew a lion face on the back of their spoons with permanent markers. (Obviously, my teen helper drew this face as a sample.)  The children then turned the spoons over and put a lot of glue on the spoon.  Then they put the yarn in the glue.  We made these at the beginning of class so they would be mostly dry by the end of class.

Telling Lies - Ananias and Sapphira

Ananias and Sapphira

Acts 5:1-11

As an application story for Ananias and Sapphira, we spent time discussing telling the truth and telling lies. Sometimes we tell "little white lies" to cover up something so we won't get into trouble.  But then we find we have to tell another lie to cover up that one, then a bigger lie to cover up that one, then a bigger lie, and so on.

When we were discussing this, I had a large tan paper (card stock) pocket in my hand.  When I told them about the little white lies, I pulled out the little bitty snake. (They could not see the other snakes.) I told them that when they tell lies, it's like this little snake was in their own pants pocket.  It might bite but it wouldn't hurt much.  Then as the lies got bigger, so did the snakes. Each time the snakes got bigger, the children got more and more worried. I told them that if the larger snake bites, it hurts worse and worse.  When we got to the largest snake, their eyes opened wide.  

Telling little lies often grows into bigger and bigger lies.  Even telling a little lie is bad.  It's like having a little snake in your pocket.  The best thing to do is to tell the truth even if it means you will get into trouble.  God always wants us to tell the truth.

The snakes are all connected with fishing line.  The fishing line is taped to the back of each snake.  There is about 6-8 inches between each snake so when one snake is pulled out of the pocket, the next larger snake cannot be seen.

I let each of the children make one of these to take home.  Instead of fishing line for them, I let them use a thin string. (Fishing line curls up too much and made it too difficult for the children to make by themselves.) 

For my snakes, I did not find a pattern nor did I have a die cut; but since I had 30 children in the class, I had to find a machine to cut them all out.  I actually used a pattern of a lion's tail on a Cricut die cut cartridge (Paper Doll Dress Up).  I cut 5 different sizes of the tail.  I cut the snakes out of creme colored card stock. The children colored each one to look like a snake and then taped them to the string.  They created the pocket for the snakes out of two half pieces of construction paper. 

When this step was complete, the children glued the application story on the pocket so they could retell the application story at home.

Feel free to print the snake pattern. 

The story to glue on the pocket can be printed as well.