Scripture: Psalm 3
Learning Objectives:
- Students will learn about 32 of the Psalms were written by people crying out to God in bad times.
- Students will learn it is okay for us to tell God when we are sad and scared and ask him to help us.
- Students will learn God understands when we don’t understand why bad things are happening in our lives and wants to comfort us.
- Students will learn how emotions match face and body language.
Guiding Question: How does one express emotions in English?
Materials: Paper, pencils, drawing utensils
Procedure: Review the message of asking for God’s help from the scripture above. Tell students that the best thing they can do when they are sad or scared is to reach out to God and pray for help. Explain that God is always there to comfort us when we are upset. Remind students that they may not always understand why bad things are happening but it is important to remember that God knows all things and will comfort them and bring good out of all bad situations. Ask students about how they would have liked to feel encouraged by others during times when they were sad or struggling with something. Then explain that they can provide the same kind of encouragement to others and ask God how to reach other people.
Introduce the activity. Explain that there are many different emotions we can feel such as frustrated, worried, happy, sad, etc. Tell students that body language and facial expressions can often show how someone is feeling without you even having to ask them. Have the students draw various faces with as many emotions as possible and label the faces with emotion words.
Additional Questions: How can students express different emotions?
Supplemental Activity: Have students come up in front of the class and express different emotions without saying anything. When you call a student up, whisper to them an emotion to act out and the class has to guess what emotion it is and how they knew.