Long Story Short: Adam and Eve Disobey God

Posted on August 30, 2012 by Deanna

Last week we talked about the first real pivotal story of the Bible: the Fall of man and the introduction of sin into God’s perfect Creation. I continue to be impressed by our devotional, Long Story Short by Marty Machowski. It is deep enough that Eric and I are getting something out of it, yet simple enough that Elijah (not quite 3) is learning as well. Our nightly Bible time is a highlight of our day, and while we’re still working with the boys on how to be good listeners and not distract each other, both of them are eager to participate. I especially like the prayer suggestions each day. Every night Elijah continues to thank God for creating all the animals, and now after this lesson he’s been adding, “Thank you for hiding my sin.” It always fascinates me to see what stands out to them.

Go-Along Books

Some of the books we had out for the lessons on Creation included the story of the Fall, so we kept those out for reading at looking at throughout the week:

God Made it for You!: The Story of Creation by Charles Lehmann
The Real Story of Creation by Paul L. Maier (The text is too advanced for my preschoolers, but I liked having it out for the pictures.)
The Creation Story for Children by Helen and David Haidle

Reading Practice

As far as books for Ian to read himself, we continued the same books from last week:

We Learn About God from Rod and Staff Publishers (a beginning “reader” that’s right at Ian’s level)
The Beginner’s Bible by Karyn Henley (Ian can almost read this on his own. We both read aloud simultaneously on this one so he doesn’t get stuck on any harder words.)
Adam and Eve minibook from Christian Preschool Printables (If you need help folding it, here are directions.)

He also practiced with our Bible verse cards (see my last post for how I use them). This week our verse was “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:23. We had a few songs to go along with it (see our “Listening Lesson” below), and both boys memorized it easily.

Bible Notebook

The word “sin” in both Hebrew and Greek means “to miss the mark.” It was an archery term that described something off target. God’s perfect law is the standard to which we are all held (“Sin is lawlessness.” 1 John 3:4), yet we all fail to hit that bullseye. As our memory verse says, we all “fall short of the glory of God.” For our notebook page, I had the boys glue concentric circles to make a target, then we put an X to the side to show we had missed the mark.

Activities

Beacause this year is Ian’s official “Pre-K” year (if there’s really anything “official” about Pre-K), I want to put together at least some sort of portfolio for him in addition to his Bible notebook. My plan is to have him use the Bible ABC pages from Christian Preschool Printables as copy work. By the end of the year he’ll have completed the whole alphabet. This week the “A” page was perfect for our lesson.

I also printed and laminated sequencing cards from mini-book at Christian Preschool Printables.

Multimedia

As I said, this week’s story is a pivotal part of the overall gospel story, which means there are many crucial concepts to understand within this one chapter. Consequently, our “Listening Lesson” this week continued to include a lot of catechism songs from the Questions With Answers series from Songs for Saplings. We’ll be continuing to listen to these for a while to plant these truths in the hearts of everyone in our family. Here was our iPod playlist for the week: