Noah's Ark

I've been trying to be more intentional about doing some preschooly lessons with Aria.  I've found that I succeed the most when we base our lessons on Bible stories.  The method I have come up with is to study the same story for a week and do some activities with it.  Back in April we focused on Noah's Ark for a week.  My big idea for the story was to keep track of our weather for 40 days since it rained for 40 days while Noah and his family were on the ark.  At first, I thought it was going to rain for 40 days here, too.  I think it rained the first 8 days we were keeping track.  For our records I simply wrote the numbers 1-40 on separate sheets of paper.  Each day I asked Aria what the weather was like.  Sometimes she drew pictures of the weather and sometimes she just told me and I wrote it down.  And sometimes we forgot a day or two and had to make it up the next day.  Then we hung them up consecutively on an empty wall in our kitchen.  The small lessons I liked from this activity were: reading numbers up to 40, paying attention to the weather, coloring and writing, and a couple months focus on Noah's Ark.  We only read the story every day the first week.  After that I just periodically asked Aria why we were keeping track of the weather for 40 days.  She knew every time.

Our forty days were up last Sunday.  To tie the lesson back together, we read the Noah's Ark story again, only I focused on the end and what happened after the flood.  We talked about the rainbow and God's promise to never flood the earth again.  Then we put rainbow streamers in front of our weather pages to symbolize how God's promise brings new life after the flood.  Here is what our wall looks like:

I used the lesson about God's promise to Noah as a spring board to a theme on God's promises this week.  So far we revisited Noah, did some activities with Abraham, and have just read through Joshua and Jericho.  I plan to do this theme for about two weeks and hit the big promises, like eternal life, from the New Testament.  I really enjoy doing these activities with Aria and seeing her learn and understand.  Just tonight I asked her a few questions about God's promises right before bedtime and she could answer every one.  I hope this will lead her to understand more about God, who loves her so much!