The Battle of Jericho (in 10 minutes)

Due to some confusion on the rota, I had to help out at the last minute with the week on the battle of Jericho.  This is what you can do with precisely 10 minutes of preparation:

Welcome the children, and give them a drink and a snack.

Get out a Duplo baseboard, and tell the children you need some help with building a wall for this week's story.  Can they bring you some Duplo pieces from the box, and you'll build a wall together?

If they don't fetch very many pieces, get them to bring the box closer, so you can get pieces out yourself.

Build a nice wall with no doors or windows.

Point out that the wall has no doors of windows - how could you get through it?  In this week's story, the Israelites (God's people) had to get into a city that had huge walls all the way round.

Tell the story of the battle of Jericho from memory (without the chance to check the details first!).  Count to seven together for the number of times the Israelites marched around Jericho ("Who can count to seven with me?").

Knock the Duplo wall down at the appropriate moment in the story (they joined in with knocking it down, too, with great glee).

Get out some A4 sheets of thin card and some stickers.  Roll the card up into trumpets and let them decorate them with the stickers and crayons.

Play with: construction toys and musical toys.

Phew!

Joshua and the Spies (Numbers 13)

This is the story where Joshua sends 12 men to find out what Canaan looks like, and gets mixed reports - giant fruit, but also giants!  I went for the theme of "exploring" from this story.

We started with plastic fruit "hidden" all round the room (mostly under chairs, in plain sight!).  As the children came in from church, I told them all that today's story was about exploring, and I needed some explorers to find the fruit hidden all over the room - then bring it back to the mat.

When all (well, most) of the fruit had been retrieved, we handed out drinks & biscuits, then looked at all the fruit we had found.  Could we name it all?  What's this one called?  How many pears do we have?  Etc.

Then it was story time.  I recapped where we had got to last time (Israelites had escaped from Egypt, and had got the the desert, on their way to the promised land). I used the "Beginners Bible" version, which has the giant bunch of grapes on one side of a double spread and the rest of the spies looking scared on the other side.  We talked about feeling hopeful vs feeling scared, and how we should trust in God, even when we're scared.

Then it was time to act out the story.  I had prepared a giant bunch of grapes, using a net bag filled with green ball pit balls.  With a chunky stick from the churchyard through the handle of the bag, I got two of the children to carry it round as we all went exploring together.  I used the tune/pattern of "We're going on a bear hunt":

Chorus:
We're going to the promised land. (children repeat)
But we're not scared. (children repeat)
What a beautiful day! (children repeat)

Uh, oh - grass!  Long, swishy grass!
We can't go over it. (repeat)
We can't go under it. (repeat)
We've got to go through it! (repeat)
Swishy, swashy, swishy swashy, etc. (with actions of sweeping the grass out of the way)

Chorus

Uh, oh - a river!  A deep, wide river!
Splish, splosh, etc.

Chorus

Uh, oh, mud!  Sticky, squelchy mud!
Squelch, squelch, etc.

Chorus

Uh, oh, giants!  Big, scary giants!
Quick, back through the mud, squelch, squelch, squelch, squelch,
back through the river, splish, splash, splish, splash
back through the grass, swishy swashy, swishy swashy
Back to our tents; zip up the tents (mime, and crouch down)
Phew, safe back at home!

We then had craft and playing time.  We had a colouring sheet with two men and the big bunch of grapes, where you could cut out the grapes and the stick, and stick it onto the pair of men.  We also had a communal craft, with a big sheet of paper with the outline of a bunch of grapes, and lots of green crepe paper to screw up into grapes and stick on.

For toys, I went with the food theme and got out the kitchen set and the farm set.  I also got out the ball pit, so we could empty out the "grapes" from the net and play with them in the pit.