Scripture: Jonah 1-4, with emphasis on chapters 3-4
Memory Verse: “But
you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in
steadfast love and faithfulness.” — Psalm 86:15 (NSRV)
Offering: Haven House which provides a multitude
of programs that have helped thousands of young people and their families
overcome problems and become productive members of the community.
Concepts:
Objectives:
1. Older children will locate the book of Jonah in their
Bibles. Younger children will learn that the story is in the Old Testament.
2. The children will play a game that reinforces their
knowledge of the events of chapters 3-4.
3. The class will consider Jonah’s anger toward God’s
love and mercy, and how we are like Jonah.
Procedure:
Welcome and Introductions (10:00):
1. Greet the children and introduce yourself. Wear your name-tag. Make sure the children
are wearing name-tags. If not, ask the shepherd to supply a temporary badge.
Remember you are interacting with a different group of students each week who
may not know you.
2.
Open with a brief
prayer (optional, as they have just prayed in Great Hall).
3. Explain the purpose of this workshop. Our Bible story today is Jonah, and we’re
going to play a game that will show how well you know the end of the story.
Scripture/Bible Story (10:05):
1. Grades 1-2 will not use Bibles, but do open yours to
show them where the story is. For grades 3-5, make sure everybody has a Bible.
The shepherds will have extra Bibles.
Help the students to find the book of Jonah. (Get the shepherds to go
around the room and help with this.)
2.
If necessary,
review the organization of the Bible: The Bible is divided into two big parts,
the Old and New Testaments. Each part is made up of books, which are divided
into chapters and verses. Have them figure out whether Jonah is in Old or New
Testament (it was written before Jesus’ time, so it’s in the Old Testament).
Show them that if they open their Bible in the middle, they’ll usually land in
the book of Psalms in the OT. Point out that the book name is at the top of
each page. Jonah comes after Psalms, so if they don’t know the order of the OT
books, they can look through the books following Psalms until they find it.
3.
Tell the class:
Some people believe the story of Jonah is history (it really happened) and some
people think it is a story that was written to teach a lesson. Whether it
really happened or not is not very important; what’s important is the lesson we
learn from it.
4.
Tell the story
using the summary below as a guide. This workshop emphasizes chapters 3-4, so
briefly summarize Jonah’s running away and encounter with the whale (big fish).
Be more detailed with the rest of the story. Be dramatic! This story is long
but has lots of funny parts (animals wearing sackcloth, Jonah being spitting
mad to have such a merciful God, the plant that grows overnight and the worm
that eats it), so you should be able to hold the children’s interest if you ham
it up.
After the first week or two, you can let the children
help you tell the story. This will give you an idea of how much they already
know. (You may find that they know about the fish but not about what happens in
Story Summary
Jonah Runs from the Lord
One day the Lord told a man
named Jonah to go to the city of
But while the ship was at
sea, the Lord made a terrible storm come up, and the ship was about to break to
pieces. The sailors said, "Let's ask our gods to show us who caused all
this trouble." They cast lots to find out, and the lot fell to Jonah. They
threw Jonah overboard, and the sea calmed down.
The Lord sent a big fish to
swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish for three days. From inside the
fish, Jonah prayed. Finally the Lord commanded the fish to vomit Jonah up onto
the shore. And it did.
Jonah Goes to
Once Jonah was back on dry
land, the Lord told him again to go to
This time, Jonah obeyed and
went to
The people believed God's
message, and they fasted and wore sackcloth to show their sorrow. Even the king
of
When the people stopped doing
evil things, God did have pity and did not destroy them.
Jonah Gets Angry at the
Lord
This made Jonah
But the Lord merely replied,
"What right do you have to be angry?"
Jonah went outside the city
and sat, sulking and waiting to see what would happen to
But the Lord asked,
"Jonah, do you have the right to be angry about the vine?"
"Yes, I do," he
answered, "and I'm angry enough to die."
But the Lord said: “Think
about it, Jonah. That vine grew up in one night and died the next. You did not plant it or take care of it, but
yet you’re concerned about it. Now in the city of
Application (10:15):
1.
Divide the class into several teams of three to five players. The teams
will take turns spinning the game wheel and answering questions about the
scripture. Have the shepherd keep score on the white board.
2.
Line the teams up and let the first person in line for the team spin and
answer a question. Let him consult his team if needed, but he is the only one
who can give the answer. If he answers correctly, award his team the number of
points he spun for. No points for a wrong answer.
Grades 1-2: Use the multiple-choice
answers provided with the questions.
Grades 3-5: Give the team a chance to
answer the question, but offer multiple choices if they’re stumped. If the
class seems to already know the story well, you can mix up the order of the
questions.
3.
After his turn, the player goes to the end of his team’s line. Go to the
next team and continue until everyone has had a turn.
4. Alternatives:
Reflection Time (10:35):
Gather the class in a circle
for discussion. Accept all answers and encourage discussion, but be sure the
points in italics are made, by you if not by the children:
I wonder why God
was so forgiving to the people of
Let’s say our
memory verse together: “But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and
gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.”
I wonder why Jonah
wanted
Do you have any
enemies? Who are they? (Encourage the
children to think of personal enemies, like kids they don’t get along with, and
also on a global scale — Osama bin Laden, terrorists in Iraq, etc.)
Do you want God to
be kind to your enemies? Sometimes we’re
like Jonah and would rather see our enemies destroyed. We have trouble
accepting that God loves our enemies just like God loves us. And just like
Jonah, we don’t like to help our enemies.
Journals (10:35): Pass out the journal pages and ask the shepherds to pass out
pencils/markers. Optional: Give the children a sticker or some other memento to
paste in their journal as a reminder of the workshop. Read the prompt out loud
and be sure they understand that the modern third-grade Jonah is supposed to
think and respond as the biblical Jonah would. Offer suggestions if they’re
stumped. (A few suggestions for what Jonah might say to the teacher: “WHY did you accept Adolph’s apology? Adolph
has done lots of bad things. He doesn’t deserve to be let off the hook. You
should have punished him. If you’re not going to punish Adolph, I will. I’m
going to knock him down on the playground tomorrow.” Etc.) If they don’t know
how to spell a word, write it on the white board. Those who finish early can
turn the page over and do the activity on the back.
Ask the students to put down their journals and sit quietly.
Encourage the children to
bring an offering next week. Remind them that the offering from this rotation
will go to Haven House. The money will help to provide a multitude of programs
that have helped thousands of young people and their families overcome problems
and become productive members of the community.
Prayer: Tell the children: For our closing prayer, I want
everybody think of a person who is your enemy. It can be somebody you know or
somebody that is an enemy of our country. I’m going to start the prayer, then
we’ll have a moment when we all silently pray for our enemies, then I’ll close
the prayer.
God, help us to remember that you love
our enemies the same way you love us. Please bless each of the enemies that we
are thinking of now……………… Help us to love our enemies and show us how to help
them. Amen.
Tidy and Dismissal: Ask children to help collect papers, pencils, Bibles,
etc. When the room is tidy, dismiss the class.
Teacher preparation in
advance:
1. Read the scripture passages and attend the
Faith Quest Leaders Bible Study.
2. Prepare opening and closing prayers.
3. Room set-up (must wait until after
4. Find the small blue fold-up table, stored
behind the puppet stage. It is handy for organizing all your supplies. Optional:
Bring a CD or taped music for background music while you are gathering,
meditative music for Reflection time. A boom box is located in the Puppet
workshop cabinet.
5. In your bin of supplies are two books of
maps. You might find one with
6.
Display the
memory verse in the room (not on the white board, as you’ll need that for
scorekeeping).
7.
GAME WHEEL: The
game wheel is kept in the main room of the activity building. You will need to
move it into the
Supply List
Extra Bibles
Map (optional, in supply bin)
Dry-erase marker (in supply
bin)
Game wheel
Pencils (in supply bin; the
shepherds also have pencils)
Journal pages
Questions for game (answers are in italics)
After the whale
spit Jonah onto dry land, what did the Lord tell Jonah?
After his encounter
with the whale, what did Jonah do?
How big was
How long did Jonah
walk before delivering his message?
What did Jonah tell
the people of
True or false: When
the people of
True
What did the king
of
He dressed in sackcloth, left his palace and sat in
dust.
He had Jonah
arrested for disturbing the peace.
He laughed at all
the people wearing sackcloth.
Which of these
things did the king order the people to do?
Eat, drink and be
merry.
Stop wearing
sackcloth.
Pray to the Lord with all your heart.
Which of these
things did the king order the people to do?
Feed your animals.
Put sackcloth on your animals.
Prepare a feast for
Jonah.
Which of these
things did the king order the people to do?
When God saw that
the people had stopped doing evil things, what happened?
When Jonah saw
God’s mercy to
What made Jonah so
mad?
Why did Jonah say
he hadn’t wanted to go to
Jonah was so mad,
what did he say he wanted to do?
When Jonah left the
city, what did he do?
What did God do to
keep the sun off Jonah?
What happened to
the vine?
After the vine
died, what did God do?
What did Jonah say
when he was sitting in the hot sun?
What did the Lord
say about the vine?
What did the Lord
say about