Cooking for Daniel

We made a feast for Daniel & his friends!

Daniel & Kings Food Felt Board Characters

    My daughter loved doing her advent calendar this year at Christmas so I decided to find a way to incorporate that idea throughout the year. I hung a piece of felt up on the wall to serve as our felt boar. Then I cut out 7 characters or pictures that match our story, laminate them, and attach a sticky piece of velcro to the back. You do not need velcro on the felt board because velcro sticks to felt. (Use the non-fuzzy side of the velcro. You can test it to make sure you have the correct side of velcro so it will stick to the felt.)

    Each night, when my daughter says her memory verse for the week she gets to place one of the pictures on the felt board. This week's memory verse: "You provide food, and they are satisfied." Psalm 104:28

    If you right-click on the photo and select print, it will give you the option to print as a full page. If your children are old enough, you can print black-and-white and let your kids color the pictures.

 

Daniel & the King’s Food

Theme: Obedience                  Story: Daniel & the King's Food

Stories/Devotions - Little Visits pg. 14 - Little Visits pg. 36 - Little Visits pg. 128	Songs - Trust & Obey - Obey Sunday School Song - Daniel Will you Eat?	Crafts & Art Projects - Healthy Food Chart* - Fruit & Veggie painting*
Movies - Daniel and the King's Food: Story in Pictures	Books - Sid the Science Kid: Why Can't I Have Cake for Dinner? by Jodi Huelin - Healthy Snacks, Healthy You! by Sally Lee	Games & Activities - Sort plastic play food into healthy foods and occasional treats - Make a healthy 'meal' out of play-doh - Get your whole family involved and eat only foods on the Daniel Fast to experience the sacrifice Daniel made in obedience to God
Snacks/Food Ideas - Ants on a Log (Spread peanut butter on a banana & top with raisins) - Fruit Salad	Field Trips & Outings - During your weekly trip to the grocery store, spend some time discussing healthy choices we can make for our body.	Educational Theme Ideas - Discuss how our bodies use food - Discuss what kind of plants different fruits & veggies come from and how plants grow
Memory Verse "You provide food, and they are satisfied." Psalm 104:28

*Health Food Chart – Print pictures of various foods that your child is familiar with. Draw a line on a piece of construction paper to make two columns and label them: 'Foods that Help our Bodies Grow' and 'Fun Foods to Eat Occasionally' or something along those lines. Sort through the food pictures with your child and discuss which categories these foods fall under.
*Fruit & Veggie Painting – Let your child use a fruit or veggie dipped in paint as a stamp. Juicier fruits won't work as well but squash, carrots, potatoes, and apples all work great. Just cut them in half and start making prints on a piece of construction paper. A spear of broccoli would also make a pretty neat print.

Fun with Noah's Ark

We made an 'ark' with graham crackers and peanut butter. Then I laid out four pairs of matching animal crackers. She had to find the matching pairs and put the animals on the boat two by two. She loved it! But the most fun was eating the animal crackers and licking the peanut butter off of the boat!

We built a boat with legos, rounded up all the animals, and brought them to safety on the ark!

Noah’s Ark

Theme: Obedience                  Story: Noah's Ark

Stories/Devotions - Genesis 6-9 - The Beginner's Bible pg. 26 - Pajama Bible pg. 8	Songs -  Arky Arky Song -Trust & Obey - Obey Sunday School Song	Crafts & Art Projects - Coloring pages* - Rainbow Collage* - Draw a rainbow in the driveway with sidewalk chalk
Movies - Baby Einstein Baby Noah - Veggietales Minnesota Cuke and the Search for Noah's Umbrella	Books - Noah's Noisy Ark by Susan Hood - Noah & the Great Flood by Warwick Hutton - Sir Maggie the Mighty: A Book about Obedience by Michael P. Waite	Games & Activities - Fill the Ark* - Two by Two Roundup* - What If?*
Snacks/Food Ideas - Build an 'ark' with graham crackers & a little icing and pair with some animal crackers. - Put water in a few small bowls and add a drop or two of food coloring. Let them paint a rainbow on some bread and make toast or a sandwich!	Field Trips & Outings - Go to the zoo and talk about how much work it must have been to get all those animals on the ark but Noah obeyed anyways.	Educational Theme Ideas - Number 2: Identify things that come in pairs. Count groups of 2. - Animals: Discuss what things animals need to live; their habitats; how we benefit from animals
Memory Verse "Every kind of animal and bird… went into the boat with Noah." Genesis 7:8-9

Crafts:
*Coloring Pages – I put in 'rainbow coloring page' or 'Noah coloring page' in a google image search and print a few coloring pages to use throughout the week.
*Rainbow Collage-Tear small pieces of construction paper and glue them down to make a rainbow collage (tearing is a great way to work on fine motor skills!)


Games & Activities
*Fill the Ark- Build a boat, gather animals, and bring them to safety. (This activity could be done with legos/blocks and plastic animals, a laundry basket and stuffed animals, made out of play-doh, or just about anything you have handy!
*Two by Two Roundup - Print and cut out several pairs of animals and tape them to the walls around the house. Round up all the animals and bring them back to a printed picture of a boat or a blanket or box designated as the boat.
*What If? – We are frequently explaining to Charis that she needs to obey so that 'x' doesn't happen so I decided to give her a visual demonstration of what would have happened if Noah had not obeyed God. We sat on the edge of the bathtub and put all of her bath toy animals in the tub and asked her 'What if Noah decided he didn't really feel like building the ark?". Then we turned on the water to see what happened to the animals with no ark to protect them. Then we repeated the process with a boat so that she could see that Noah's choice to obey made a difference.

Writing His Word on Their Hearts

      I am starting this blog as a place to store my plans, ideas, and resources for the weekly Bible stories that we do in our home. We have one almost-preschooler and one almost-toddler. We feel that the primary responsibility for training our children rests on us as parents and that it is never too early to start! We want our children to hear Bible stories on a daily basis and for worshiping and praying together to be a normal part of our daily life. I am a teacher at heart so of course I decided that lesson plans were necessary if we are truly going to be intentional about this mission of teaching our children about Jesus.
      We have chosen a theme for each month that we feel hold relevance and meaning for our kids and a different Bible story each week that supports that theme. For each week's Bible story, I usually have a 'lesson plan' that outlines ideas for biblical resources and devotions, movies, books, activities, crafts, songs, snacks, a memory verse, 'field trips' we can take, and other related educational ideas. My daughter is almost 2.5 and she soaks this stuff up! Some people may think it seems young to be memorizing verses but she very easily memorizes her (simplified) verse each week. I don't think we can be too young to begin writing God's word on our hearts. So often I am surprised by things that she says or does that I didn't even know she knew anything about! Because of this, I want to be more intentional about shepherding my kids into God's kingdom rather than sitting by passively while they accept whatever the world throws at them.