One of the principles we regularly encourage Bible class teachers to follow is to incorporate as many of their students’ senses during a lesson as possible. This extra sensory information can aid both understanding and memory. The senses of sight, sound and touch are relatively easy, but how does one incorporate smell and taste in a Bible lesson? With a little creativity!
Bible classes in almost every setting can incorporate food on occasion. It takes a little more preparation and expense, but the benefits are worth it. Besides the long term benefits of understanding and memory, many children aren’t attentive in Bible class because they are hungry – regardless of social status. Classes before worship often mean skipped breakfast and those after mean even children who ate breakfast are hungry. You want to serve just enough food to take the edge off of hunger and slightly raise blood sugar levels, but not enough to spoil their next meal (your considerations will be different if your students may not eat again for many hours).
So what are some fun ways to incorporate food in a regular Bible lesson? Some are story specific, while others may work well with multiple lessons. Here are some of our favorite ideas.
- Grinding grain. A couple of small mortar and pestles (you can often borrow these from others) and some unground wheat or barley from markets like Whole Foods and your students can understand that baking bread for someone during Bible times took a lot more work than they realized.
- Whole grain breads. These make healthy snacks to get blood sugar up and keep it steady. If you are having a lesson about yeast, make one batch of bread. Let half rise normally and keep the other in the freezer until right before class. Show students the difference yeast makes as it rises.
- Unleavened bread. You will have to watch your time carefully, but making and baking small flat loaves of unleavened bread takes about twenty minutes (preheat the oven before class). Students have bread to taste and take home. (I give each student a piece of parchment paper with their name on it to make their bread and bake it on the cookie sheet with so you can give each child the correct bread.)
- Locusts. I used to be able to get actual edible locusts online, but now can only find edible crickets or grasshoppers on Amazon or at stores with camping and hiking things. Since they are related, I don’t worry about it too much. Make sure to get unflavored as I doubt John the Baptist added chili powder. Don’t buy a lot, because most kids won’t try it. I have found that many will grab their parents after class to try and get them to eat it!
- Edible gold. It’s actually surprisingly inexpensive to buy enough edible gold to last you for years. Even though Moses used ground gold and mixed it with water, I just let them taste the flakes. I explain that the ground up idol in water wasn’t as pleasant, but the lesson was to remember their sin and be repulsed by it because of the experience of having to “drink their sin”.
- Dates, figs, raisins, pomegranates, etc. Explain why they most likely ate a lot of dried fruit. Many of your students may be surprised to learn there was not any electricity or the appliances we normally use that are connected to it. Depending on the season, I try to show them the fruit before drying as well (or a photo of it). Fruits also make great snacks as they raise blood sugar quickly, but keep it more stable than cookies or doughnuts. It is amazing how many children have never eaten any of these fruits.
- Olives. Olives and olive oil are mentioned quite a bit in the Bible. What you may not realize is that olives are difficult to harvest by picking and involve a long process to even make them edible. Describe the processes and show them photos. It’s hard to find unprocessed olives where I am, so I used drained canned olives and talk about how olive oil was made. Then they make their own “oil” by grinding olives.
Be careful with allergies (I get food permission slips), but have fun with it. If you don’t need food to boost blood sugar levels, use it sporadically so it is special when you do have food. Take advantage of stories with food in them to incorporate the senses of taste and smell in your Bible lessons.
