Noah's Ark

Today was my Sabbath with my children and we had Sabbath school on Noah's Ark and obeying God.

We spent almost 2 hours of Sabbath school activities this morning - it was so much fun!

To start with, we made aluminum foil boats to put coins into to see how hard it would have been for Noah (who had never built a boat before) to build the ark by himself. My 5 year old daughter built the best boat of the 3 of us!

Then we practiced following instructions:

1. Place a piece of printer paper on the table in front of you with it lengthwise longer than it is in height (landscape orientation).
2. Find the center of the paper and then make a straight line from that point all of the way up to almost the top of your paper.
3. Go back to the center of the paper and draw a straight line from that point left to almost the left edge of the paper.
4. Go back to the center of the paper and draw another straight line from that point right to almost the right edge of the paper.
5. Now we are going to draw a smile by starting at the end of the left line and ending at the end of the right line.
6. Next we are going to make another line, slightly higher and slightly shorter than the first line, going straight out on the left side from the line going up.
7. Now make a matching line going right from the line going up - again, slightly higher and slightly shorter than the first right line.
8. From the end of the line to the left that is higher than the line connected to the smile, draw a straight, horizontal line from the left-most point to the top of the line from the center upwards.
9. Then, from the end of the line to the right that is higher than the line connected to the smile, draw a straight, horizontal line from the right-most point to the top of the line from the center upwards.

Ta da! You should have a sailboat now!

My daughter had a harder time with this exercise, but both kids made beautiful boats!

We read the Sabbath school story and made simple ark-shaped puzzles out of the memory verse:

We will obey the voice of the Lord. Jeremiah 42:6

The last thing that I wanted to do with the kids was to build a replica of the ark. I remember doing it with my grandfather (Poppy) and with my Dad as a child, but also remembered that I didn't have enough lego blocks to do it justice! I pulled out my Lego block collection anyway and the kids, my boyfriend, and I spent a couple of hours (ok, so maybe more than a couple of hours...!) on building an ark out of Lego blocks. The creation has taken over my dining room table! *wink*

And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it. Genesis 6:15-16

So I cut the dimensions down by about 50% and called a 1 by 1 lego brick one cubit. Our building block ark is 26 blocks wide and 150 blocks long! And 15 blocks tall! We didn't quite make it to have stories inside, but just did the basic outline. It does have a working ramp/door and it has a few windows. *smile* Our design had a few creative changes, but it is still pretty impressive.

I wish that I could take the kids to go see the life-size Ark replica in Kentucky, but I can't afford a trip like that anytime soon so I suppose I did the best that I could do today to show them how amazing it was for what God taught Noah to do in order to save what was still good in the world He made! *smile*

What would you have added in for teaching your children about history/Biblical concepts? I love getting new ideas!