His Treasure Seekers

“Peace, be still!” Jesus dramatically displayed his power in this week’s Bible story from the ABC Jesus Loves Me 3-Year Old Curriculum, Week 23 lesson plan.  The story is found in all the synoptic gospels, but we read it from Mark 4:35-41 because that’s where the picture was in Ian’s ESV Seek and Find Bible.  My main objective this week was to help Ian understand the meaning of “peace.”

For once, Ian wasn’t eager to jump into our Bible story Monday morning.  I wasn’t going to push it, but then he saw The Story About Ping in our “school” basket (post coming soon!) and wanted me to read it.  I love our Five in a Row books, but I am determined to keep Bible as our top priority so I told him I would read it to him after we had read our Bible story.  Once I started reading it from his Bible, he forgot all about “Ping” for a while.  Instead, he raced to the flannel board set and had me read it again while he placed the pieces.  I think we did it three or four times before he felt ready to move on.  (And then Elijah, who had been listening to all this from the kitchen as he finished breakfast, had to come in and have a turn with the flannel board.)  Later that day I heard Ian telling Grandpa the story using the flannel board again.  In fact, he asked me to read the story from his Bible almost every day this week so he could act it out.  I think he liked the drama.

The “story” page in Ian’s Bible (a simple retelling that goes along with the picture) stated that Jesus was sleeping in the “back” of the boat.  I read that page to him first, but then every time afterward I read from the Mark passage, which used the term “stern.”  I was surprised that Ian caught the difference the very first time he heard the ESV version.  So I printed out a picture that helped us learn the basic parts of a boat.

Throughout the week, we read the story in The Beginner’s Bible (by Karyn Henley), The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes, The Rhyme Bible Storybook, and Classic Bible Stories: A Family Treasury.   (I try to read from the ESV plus one Bible storybook each day.)  We also had a lot of reinforcement from our weekly iPod playlist:

• “Storm on the Lake” from the ESV Audio Drama Children’s Bible from Faith Comes By Hearing
• SONG “Be Still” from the ESV Audio Drama Children’s Bible from Faith Comes By Hearing
• “When I am Afraid” from Hide ’em in Your Heart Vol. 1 by Steve Green
• “The Wind and the Waves Obey Him” from 100 Ways to Know God Loves me & 100 Songs to Love Him Back
• “Peace” from Music Machine
• “The Wind” (a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson, found in A Child’s Garden of Verses, which you can also find as an iTunes podcast)
• Karen & Kids podcast: “Storms” (though it wasn’t really about this story)

For Ian’s Bible notebook page, we glued a simple boat craft on top of a page of blue “bubble painting.”  I mixed some bubble bath solution with blue paint powder in a pan.  Then Ian and I blew the bubbles up and repeatedly laid the paper on top to make prints.  When the whole page was covered we set it aside until it was dry enough to glue on the pieces of the boat.