Balaam's Talking Donkey Paper Puppets

I never read this story as a kid so I had no idea what crafts to work with! It's a pretty quirky story that teaches the kids a lot, like how we should bless people and not curse them. I also got to explain to the kids what angels were. (This is also a great story to teach kids about how animal cruelty is not cool!)
So I didn't do a little comic strip like I usually do but I did use the kids bible to read the story aloud to them. Unfortunately the heaters dried the air out and I was choking on my words! But hey, I tried....
I googled and searched for many crafts but they showed up with just donkey masks basically. So I made my own cheap and easy little puppet donkeys! 

So here's our craft:

What you'll need:
Sellotape
Papers
Things to colour in with

So what you wanna do is make some origami fortune tellers! They look like this:

I chose to do pink so it looks like the inside of a mouth

Here's a cool site that shows you how!

Then you're going to want to print out these talking donkeys and cut around them!

PDF here!

The kids will colour their faces in like here: (On the table is the stack of fortune tellers waiting to be popped open!)

Then when they are done, you cut the two jaws apart (gaahhh that sounds painful!) and glue/tape the bottom jaw to the bottom two fortune teller squares, and the top jaw and face to the top half.

Voila!

Then it will open and close like this and they'll have talking donkey puppets! Here's one of my three year old's work of art!

I actually thought they looked a bit scary in the end but the kids really like them! 
Then the kids can run around and have little conversations with them. 

Jonah's Temporary Fish Home

So my first class was Jonah and the fish. Great story. It's a classic. It's entertaining and not terribly frightening for the kids ( 3-4 yr olds) who are learning about their on little stomachs.

For the class I did a little comic book which I will post up here soon. I love it because the kids didn't all have to look at my book I was holding up, they each got their own copy to keep and could learn how to read by learning how to follow pictures in order, left to right.

Here's our craft:

Inspired by these on Pinterest:

One.


What I like about this one which I forgot to do with my kids was have the little pipe cleaners spurting out the top.

Two.


Except replace the little fish with Jonah and a less scarier fish.

Three.


And Four.


I loved these ideas. All colourful, all easy/simple, all cheap, all made out of things you probably already have. And super interactive which the kids love!

I decided:

It was mostly inspired by the first and third option.

I gave my kids plastic cups. I wanted to use paper but the plastic actually worked better as you can see inside. But make sure you have the right markers so they can decorate their cup, unlike my poor kids (sorry!).

Here's what I whipped out when I was testing it. I let the kids draw their own eyes and gills which was great because I got to teach them what gills were and how fish breathe underwater! A little biology lesson built in.

Amos did some pretty funky eyes!
And Jonah was upside down...He refused to be mainstream.

Then they attached a tail made out of paper, which they decorated. And a Jonah (I'll upload his template with the comic book) as well which they coloured in.

We attached the tail to the behind (again another biology lesson because one kid stuck it on as a monobrow) and then stuck little Jonah inside the cup so you could see him 'inside the fish!'

Quick and easy (which is good because I take aaagess reading the story). Not much hassle! Plus one kid said I was the best teacher after doing this craft. Not to brag or anything....

Can't wait for more!

Sam's end product. What a stunner!

Hi.

Welcome to my world. That is an 18 yr old testing out the maternal goddess side of me as I am thrown into teaching bible class. Previously I have taught classes since I was around 14, but these were mainly just colouring in or creating plays with the kids to perform to their parents.

This is the first time I'm teaching actual Sunday school which is exciting and daunting at at the same time. Why? Because now I have more kids who seem to have way too much energy on Sunday mornings. 

Since I'm new to this whole thing, here are my experimental plans for classes and new or popular creative ideas that the kids seem to like, mostly made of recycled or cheap items. 

I'll show you my plan, stories and the research going into these classes.

Enjoy x