Week 3: The Fall and Letter x

This week's lesson really daunted me. Teaching the gravity and importance of sin is a big deal. It was also my first real chance to include the story of redemption. Honestly, I don't think Lucy grasped much of it, but hopefully the seeds are being planted.

Week 3: The Fall (Genesis 3)
Letter: x
Verse: "Everyone has sinned. No one measures up to God's glory." (Romans 3:23, NIRV)

On Monday we read the story of the fall in her children's Bible. Then we built a blanket fort (finally crossing the last thing off our summer bucket list!), and pretended we were Adam and Eve hiding from God. We talked about how you can never hide from God and He always sees us.

On Tuesday we attempted to make this x-ray craft.

Photo credit

Lucy went crazy with the glue and white crayons and never actually glued any q-tips to the paper. I thought about incorporating sin into the x-ray by telling her that even if we hide sin in our heart, God can see it - just like an x-ray can see the bones hidden in our body. But I decided that would be way too confusing 
for her. 

On Thursday, we discussed the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. My dad happens to have an orchard growing in the backyard:

While the girls were napping, I went outside and taped an x on one of the trees toward the middle. When the girls woke up, we went outside and I told Lucy to find the tree with the x.

We had a discussion about how God told Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree. But they did anyway. And when you do something God says not to do that's called sin. (We quoted our verse again here.) 

Then I showed Lucy the bucket of dirt I had sitting next to the tree. We got a book from the library last week called The Trouble With Germs. It talks about how germs are too tiny to see, but when they get on you the only way to get them off is with soap and water. In the book, the kids dip their hands in dirt, try to brush them off, and realize the only way to get rid of the dirt is with soap and water. I reminded Lucy about that book, then told her that sin is kind of like germs. We can't always see it, but once we sin, we're stuck with being dirty. I had Lucy dip her hands in the dirt. This was her reaction:

She didn't like it. Haha.

This was as dirty as she would get her hands:

Finally, I told her there was only one way to get the sin off of us. We went back inside to find this:

As Lucy washed the dirt off her hands, I told her that Jesus can wash the sin off our hearts. Then we sang her favorite song, "Oh happy day, happy day! You washed my sin away!"

Today we continued working on the letter x by having a treasure hunt. I wrote a bunch of clues on index cards. 

On the top corner I wrote where I was going to put each clue. (Not where the clue led, but where the current clue was found. Get it? Haha.)

Justin took Lucy outside so I could hide the clues. Then she came back in and I gave her the first clue. She loved running around finding all the clues. 

I wrote "x" on all the envelopes with the clues in them to reinforce "x marks the spot."

Finally, she found the treasure!

Dollar store goodies!

On the back of each clue, I wrote one or two words from our verse. I numbered them so Lucy could help me put them in order, then we taped them to a big piece of paper.

Neon doesn't photograph very easily. Haha.

Lucy loved doing the treasure hunt and cried for about an hour after we were done because she wanted to do another one! 

Up next: Noah's Ark and the letter Y. I foresee a lot of yaks . . .