The Plague of Frogs

Today, after composing text messages from Moses to Zipporah, we acted out the first few scenes in a skit about Moses that I found at www.rotation.org's Ideas & Lesson Exchange. (Here's my differently formatted, abridged and slightly edited version.)

With each scene we switched the actors. Before doing the scene about the plague of frogs, we stopped to make lots of jumping frogs for the scene from 4 x 6 index cards (actually, brightly colored cardstock that I had sliced into 4 x 6 pieces). Once they got the hang of this, the children could have gone on much longer with the frog-making. (We probably spent about 25 minutes making frogs.) We did, however, manage to get in the plague of frogs scene just before we ran out of time.

Text Messages from Moses to Zipporah

After considering Moses and the burning bush last week, we started on the plagues this week. Because the two are so connected, we used this 10-minute activity to recap last week's story for those who hadn't been there. (The activity, though, would work well with almost any story.) I asked children who'd been present last week to tell the story to those who hadn't been with us, and for everyone to put themselves in Moses's sandals and try to imagine what it would have felt like to experience what he experienced. Their task after hearing the story would be to pretend they were Moses and to compose a text message that Moses might have sent to his wife, Zipporah, at the end of the experience. As you can see from the samples messages, the children enjoyed incorporating text-speak. (One person noted enthusiastically that he was not going to worry about spelling at all--and was even going to intentionally misspell--since spelling is not all that important when texting!) Most children read their messages aloud when we finished and there was much laughter. A few were inspired to include Zipporah's reply as well!

            

Turning a staff into a snake

Students pair off, and decide which one in the pair will be God and which will be Moses. Each Moses gets a toilet paper tube to serve as a staff and each God gets a piece of orange construction paper to serve as a flame. Read Exodus 3:1-12 and 4:1-17 and have students act out the story as you go. After acting out the story and giving an opportunity for students to react to it, give toilet paper tubes to the children who were playing God and move on to the activity of turning the staffs into snakes. For those students who finish early, suggest that they figure out a way to make a burning bush using construction paper and/or felt. (When we did this, the first student to work on a bush asked me for a cup, and then all the other bush makers wanted one, too, so our bushes involved cups.)

 

Materials

• one toilet paper tube per child, plus a couple of extras
• various colors of felt
• scissors
• glue
• (optional, but appreciated) a pair of googly eyes for each child
• construction paper (including several sheets of orange)
• (optional) paper or plastic cups to serve as a form for a bush