Travel To Ancient Lands - Learning About The Old Testament

Sunday January 20 was our fifteenth session together. This week was part 1 of a two-part lesson that spans Unit 3, Chapter 9 and Unit 3, Chapter 10. The two chapters together teach us about the Bible and its role in the Liturgy of the Word during Mass. In preparing for the session, I established the focus for this first lesson as the Bible as a collection of books that are the Word of God, and then walking through the Old Testament. The lesson plan for the session includes the topics discussion, the activities worksheet, and craft activity.

Packing Light: If you just want the activity sheet for this session, you can find it here. It has a secret code activity, crossword, word shapes, and word search activity.

When we met in the common area for the whole group activity, we learned that Pragmatic Tiger and Fair Cheetah would not be with us today as they had a family emergency. When we got to our room we said a special prayer for their intentions, and Sweet Pea Elephant lead us with the Prayer to My Guardian Angel.

After the prayers, we sat on the floor together and started off by our regular review of Mass activities. We talked a bit about why Father is now wearing Green, how we sang the "old" version of the Gloria, and just said the Holy, Holy, Holy instead of singing it.

I asked whether anyone knew what part was called "Liturgy of the Word"... no takers. I explained that this is when we hear the readings from the Bible. Effusive Jaguar happily reminded us that this is when her grandma went up and read. Exactly! Her grandma read the first reading, then the choir mistress went up for the Psalm, and then another parishioner for the 2nd reading, and then Father for the Gospel. So, 4 readings in all. I showed them how the first 2 were from the Old Testament and the second 2 were from the New Testament.

Tell me some things you know about the Bible?

"It is a big book" (said Courtly Polar Bear)... "it has 2 parts, Old Testament and New Testament. Jesus is in the new part." (said Rocking Horse).

Oh, I think you know more than that! (and I dumped out a whole tote bag full of bible story books onto the floor). Did you know it is really a whole bunch of books put together?

(lots of wows!)

Can you imagine having to carry around all those books when you get your Bible?!

(a general sense of 'oh my gosh!')

It's definitely much easier to have them all together as one. (and then I pulled out 5 or 6 Catholic Bibles, all different looking - some with leather covers, some with gilded pages, some with pictures, some large, some small) Look at all these Bibles... they all look different but they all contain the same "Bible", the same books, the same stories.

(a general sense of appreciation as they touched the Bibles and looked at them)

(getting back to the stack of story books...)Did you know that there are lots of authors who wrote those books, but they are all the Word of God? That's right, God inspired them to write.

And you know what else? I bet you know a lot of stories from those books! Today we're going to focus on the Old Testament. The Old Testament has 46 books in it! They are separated into 4 main parts, which we will look at together soon, but first, I know you want to have a look and see some of the stories and books!

And we dug through the pile, with the children happily (and proudly) shouting out when they found stories they knew: Samson and Deliliah, David and Goliath, Adam & Eve, Jonah, Noah's Ark, Queen Esther, and so on. We took turns telling the parts of stories we could remember, and sometimes peeked into the books to remember the rest.

At this point I handed out the activity books, so that we could discuss the pictures and the stories they represented together as we looked through the books. We had fun trying to match the story names with the pictures with the correct section of the Old Testament.

Next week we will be continuing this two-part lesson, so I did not hand out the workbook pages yet. I did send home the Good News pages for the upcoming weeks. You can enjoy following the mass with them through the rest of January.

Side Trips: if you want more information, activities, and games...

• If you just have a bit of time, definitely go for one of the online jigsaw puzzles at Word of Truth
• If you have two-bits of time, check out the Bible Story activities on Calvary Chapel
• For more in-depth activities, check out some of the links in the lesson plan