Scripture: Exodus 11-12
Learning Objectives:
- Students will learn God expects us to obey Him.
- Students will learn sometimes there are horrible earthly consequences for disobeying God.
- Students will learn obeying God can often protect us from earthly consequences.
- Students will learn vocabulary associated with various holidays.
Guiding Question: Why does God want us to honor and obey Him?
Materials: Your choice of items to bring in that represent various holidays
Procedure: Share the story of the First Passover from the scriptures above. Explain how those celebrating the passover had to obey God’s commands for the passover and that protected them. Tell the students that God expects and wants us to obey Him so we can show Him we love and honor Him while also protecting ourselves from earthly consequences. Bad earthly consequences can happen we disobey God that can also affect people close to us. Explain that holidays are a great time to focus in on celebrating something specific and when the First Passover became a holiday, it allowed people to focus on the great things God had done for them. We can focus and celebrate God every day for how He loves and guides us each day.
Introduce the activity. Bring in all sorts of items used in various holidays (Christmas, Easter, 4th of July, etc) to teach holiday words. Then encourage the students to pair up. Next pull out all of the items for one holiday and quiz the rest of the class on those words. The students in pairs can discuss the right answer and first pair to raise their hands and answer correctly receives a point.
Additional Questions: How can students describe what they know about different holidays?
Supplemental Activity: Have students choose two holidays to create informational posters about.