The Gibeonites

A tricky story this week: Joshua 9 (the Gibeonite deception).  God tells the Israelites that they have to kill all the surrounding tribes (so that they don't end up following their gods).  The Gibeonites realise they're going to be killed, and dress in old clothes to fool the Israelites into making a peace treaty with them ("we're from really far away - look how worn out our clothes are from the journey!").  The Israelites don't ask God what they should do, make the treaty, then have to side with the Gibeonites in an epic battle against some other neighbours, where the sun stands still for long enough for them to finish the battle.

Many of the internet resources seemed to boil down to "God said to kill them; they didn't listen to God; the Israelites did the wrong thing."  That seems a dangerous message to give to anyone, let alone young children!

So, I went for (a) how they tricked the Israelites (b) long journeys vs. short journeys (c) even though the Israelites didn't want to help the Gibeonites after that, they had promised to, and we should always do what we promise.

I dressed up in old clothes (shame I threw out a load of more tattered ones quite recently!), and described how the old clothes made it look like it'd been a long journey ("They were new when we left!") and how they brought mouldy, smelly food with them (if I'd had more time the day before, I saw an idea about putting green food colouring on crackers to look like dry mouldy bread).

We them talked about saying you're going to do something, but then not wanting to do it: "if you say you're going to tidy your toys away, but then you don't really want to - should you still tidy them away?".  I got a couple of big nods from the older ones to this question!

The craft this week was colouring, using the main image from the first page of http://www.worduptime.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/JAM_Joshua6_yKJV.pdf.  A bit of a cop-out, but sometimes inspiration doesn't strike quite as hard as other weeks!

Toys: road playmat & vehicles; outdoor ride-on toys; food toys.