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Day 3 of our Vacation Bible School journey was all about God the Holy Spirit. You can read about day one where we learned about God the Father HERE and day two where we learned about God the Son HERE. Teaching about the Trinity is such a hard concept - even for adults to understand. I figured we would attempt to introduce them to the Holy Spirit and then touch a bit on the fruits of the spirit.
Picture Book & Felt Board
The book we read was 3 in 1 by Joanne Marxhausen. This book does an AMAZING job explaining the concept of the Trinity using an apple. It talks all about how there are 3 parts (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) but only one God. In the same way there are three parts to an apple - the seed, the flesh and the skin but only one apple. It does a great job breaking down each of the parts and talking about their roles. The book is a little long and complex for preschoolers but it is a great book for any elementary age student. It just makes a very abstract concept more concrete. The book talks a bit about the fruits of the spirit so I created fruit for our felt board. I briefly tried to explain the different fruits of the spirit, in kid friendly language.
Craft
For our craft, we made fruits of the spirit crowns. We cut the crowns ahead of time and had extension pieces ready to go to staple the crowns on our students' heads. We had them color the fruit and then cut it out. For some of our youngest learners, we had the adults cut for them. Then they glued the fruits to the crown in any order. Then we measured their heads and added an extra strip since the 11x17 crowns didn't fit entirely around their heads.
Centers
I decided to do centers each day so that students were rotating and moving around as much as possible. We also have 20 little ones in one room so it is busy. We decided to use some of the centers from the previous days to break them up into smaller groups.For our fine motor center, we used pony beads and fruit beads and string. The students were allowed to make necklaces or bracelets. These beads were sort of a fail. The hole was SO tiny and even the adults had trouble stringing them. But we had some kids who LOVED the bead center so I didn't want to close it altogether. For the kiddos who struggled with threading the beads, we put glue in a circle on a paper plate and they picked up the beads and stuck them to the glue. That way everyone got to participate in some way.
We did the playdough station again and they could practice making fruit (or any shape they wanted.) This is my new favorite playdough recipe. It was SO easy and smells so good since it is colored with Kool-Aid (and no it didn't stain their hands.) Check out the recipe HERE.
For our sensory center, we used dried beans. I used a bunch of different types of beans to make hills and the ground. We added little sheep (these were way tinier than I was expecting) to the beans. I told the students to try to hide the sheep under the beans and search for them. They were also allowed to play with the water beads from the day before.
We added a shaving cream station and practiced making letters, shapes and numbers with our fingers.
For our counting and fine motor station, we did counting clip cards where the students practiced counting the sheep, finding the correct number and clipping it with a clothespin. You can grab your own copy HERE.
At our puzzle station, we worked on creation puzzles. Students could put these together by using the picture clues, or by sequencing the numbers at the bottom. You can grab your own copy of these puzzles HERE for free.
We also had coloring pages available and the felt board out.
