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Day 2 of our Vacation Bible School journey was all about God the Son. You can read about day one where we learned about God the Father HERE. Since there is so much to teach children about Jesus, I decided to focus on Jesus as the Good Shepherd, who guides and protects us and gathers us up in his arms. It seemed to tie in with our overall VBS theme of St. Patrick and Setting Sail to Ireland.
Picture Book & Felt Board
The book we read was One Lost Sheep by Rhonda Gowler Greene. In this rhyming book, a shepherd watches and counts his sheep and discovers one missing. He searches for his sheep, finds him and returns him home. The last few pages connect the story of the shepherd to God watching over us and keeping us in his love. I had my felt board out with the shepherd and the sheep and wasn't going to use it until the story was done and then one little guy walked up and pulled a sheep off during the story and said I should hide it because that was the missing sheep. The students then counted the sheep once we found the missing one.
Craft
For our craft, we made fingerprint sheep. I found the original idea HERE. We had the heads and legs already cut. I also had the scripture verse already cut and ready to go. To make these you need the following supplies:
-1 piece of blue paper (8 1/2" x 11")
-1 black head
-4 black legs
-2 googly eyes
-white fingerpaint
-glue or stapler
-Bible verse
1. Have students glue down the legs and head to the blue paper to give the children an idea of how big to make the sheep.
2. Use white fingerpaint and the tip of your finger to make the sheep's body.
3. Glue eyes on.
4. Glue or staple scripture verse.
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 day to break them up into smaller groups.For our fine motor center, we used pony beads and cross beads and string. The students were allowed to make necklaces or bracelets. Some of them required a lot of adult help to get the string cut and tied.
We also added a playdough station that we weren't going to add until Wednesday. 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.
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.
Game
For our game we pretended to be shepherds (original idea HERE.) The shepherd got a staff (pipe insulation that I cut in half - basically like a pool noodle, just narrower) and a balloon/sheep. They had to use their staff to gently guide their balloon. They liked this but the idea of 3 and 4 year olds waiting to share 2 staffs was impossible so it quickly became a balloon toss where they could just hit balloons around the courtyard.We also had lots of time in between for listening to music, snack and bathroom breaks and free play both inside and outside. Even though I had compiled and entire cd and had songs for each day related to our lessons, the children latched onto He's Got the Whole World in his Hands, so we just went with it and sang it over and over.
Stay tuned for part three where we learned about God the Holy Spirit.