Scripture: Judges 6-8
Learning Objectives:
- Students will review how God limited the number of men who fought with Gideon so that his power could be shown.
- Students will race to practice filling a container with an amount of rice as a way to practice using terms of “amounts” such as less and more.
Guiding Question: What words in English can we use to talk about different amounts?
Materials: rice, beans, or sand, clear cup, tape/marker to mark cup with, blind fold
Procedure: Review the story of Gideon, focusing on how God limited the number of men who were to go to battle. This was so that there would be no question that their victory was from God and not by human effort. Introduce terms that denote amounts: more, less, enough, same, a little, a lot. Using different amounts of rice/beans/sand, show students comparisons using these terms. Organize the students into partners. Give each pair of students a clear cup with a mark line around it. The mark line should be the same distance from the bottom for each pair of students. Give students rice, beans or sand which they will fill the cup with. One partner will be blindfolded. The other partner will give verbal directions only. The blindfolded partner must fill the cup with rice according to the other partner’s instructions. Only the partner giving directions may talk. They can only use “amount” terms such as the ones that were introduced. (A student cannot keep pouring and simply have their partner say “stop!”) If a student scoops too much into the cup so that it goes above the line, the partner has to tell them that they need less. The partner teams race to see who can fill their cup to the exact line first. They are the winners.
Additional Questions:
- When is it useful to use “amount terms”?
- What are some other amount terms?
Supplemental Activity: Have students decide on something that they want to learn more about each other such as their favorite color, number of siblings, number of lost teeth, pets, etc. It needs to be something quantifiable. Then have students graph the data using a bar graph. Have them use terms such as more, less, same, etc. to describe the graph. For example: Fewer people have cats than dogs. There are 3 people with more than 4 siblings.
Written by: Savannah Negas