One of the ways you can make your Bible lessons more memorable is to engage all five senses of your students. Sensory information is also useful in comprehending unfamiliar words and concepts. (What is a shofar, anyway?) You may think you are already engaging sight and sound with your teaching. Unfortunately, for many teachers even that sensory input is not what it could be. It only takes a few fun tweaks to engage the senses of your Bible students.
Here are some fun ways to add more sensory experiences to your lessons.
- Sight: Photos of places in the lesson, archaeologists’ drawings of buildings with original decorative elements, real or reproductions of objects mentioned like clay lamps, scrolls and shofars, period costumes, museum exhibits of items like Baal idol (in person or on website), plants and foods (preferably real, but photos if you can’t get the real item)
- Sound: Changing voices as different people speak in the Bible story, crowd noises, music, shofar blowing, animal noises, storm noises, water noises
- Smell: “Sacrifices” burning (grilled meat on small electric portable grill outside of classroom), incense (check for scents that contain ingredients from the Middle East), foods in Bible (what does a fig smell like?), perfume (once again do your research to make authentic as possible), live animals (and the smells that come with them), bread baking
- Taste: Edible locusts/crickets, figs, dates, rustic bread, unleavened bread, quail, lamb, “manna” cookies, grape juice (Note: Check student allergies before giving food.)
- Touch: Wool, camel hair, performing tasks like weaving, grinding grain, etc., real and replica items in story like clay lamps and shofars
It takes a little extra time and effort to gather the items to add more sensory experiences to your Bible lessons. It’s worth it though because it can increase student understanding and memory of important Bible stories.