Unit 13 / Lesson 1
The Need for Further Learning
Slides for the Lesson
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Teacher's Prep
Teacher's Further Study
Here is an excellent commentary that explains the passage for grown-ups. It’s good for background knowledge. 15 minutes long.
YouTube: Specially for kids: Know the Bible - Mark 8:22-26 Healing of blind man
Games
Speed Sketching
Materials:
One sheet of paper per person
Pencils, pens, crayons, etc.
Biathlon
You will need two nerf guns and plenty of nerf bullets (30-50 would be a good number. If you have fewer nerf bullets, pause the game mid way to retrieve them before continuing
If you don’t have nerf guns, throw balls at targets instead.
Set up a space for them to run, and a line to stand behind to shoot the target. See the diagram below for a suggested setup:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Wp_v01IPL_FcF1OkFd1gl_i8nfusmwH0/view?usp=sharing
Cup Pyramid Challenge
66 styrofoam cups per group of four (this allows for a pyramid with 11 cups along the bottom and 11 cups high)
Have the cups portioned out before the lesson, so you can just hand each team a big stack of cups.
Main Activity (Wall Decorations):
Materials:
Cardstock or construction paper
Scissors
Glue / glue sticks
Coloring supplies, such as felt pens.
Optional: stickers, stencils.
You may want to research some wall decoration ideas online.
Intro
SLIDE 1
Gathering
How was your week?
SLIDE 2
Intro Game: Speed sketching
Instructions
Teacher: pass out pencils and paper to each person
We'll start this point with a speed sketching game! You'll all get a sheet of paper and fold it into quarters. I'll tell you what to draw, and you’ll have one minute to draw it as nicely as you can. We’ll play four rounds of this game.
Teacher: for four rounds, give them a word and one minute to draw. At the end of the minute, have them share the pictures they drew.
Suggestions:
Fish tank
Helicopter
Birthday cake
Bouquet of flowers
Debrief
Teacher: praise them for their drawings.
It can be amazing how much we can get done in one minute! We can draw practically anything we can imagine. But our pictures won’t be very nice after only one minute. If we want really good artwork, we need to keep working on it.
Relevance
That's what it's like sometimes when we go to church and we start following Jesus. We can learn a lot of things really fast! After a while it can feel like we've learned everything. We've sung all the songs and played all the games and heard all the big ideas.
Some people get bored. When that happens, we need a reason to keep learning about Jesus.
SLIDE 3
Big Question
Our big question today is: Why do we need to keep learning about Jesus?
Big Idea
Our big idea is:
We need to keep learning about Jesus because we won't get everything right the first time.
1. Fast learning is good, but
2. Sometimes we need to slow down and get things right.
Bible Reference
That's what we'll see in our Bible story today. Let's watch a cartoon about one of the really strange miracles that Jesus did.
SLIDE 4
Teacher: play this YouTube video:
Jesus heals a blind man at Bethesda (Mark 8:22-30)
SLIDE 5
Now let's read our Bible story.
Mark 8:22-38 (CEV)
22 As Jesus and his disciples were going into Bethsaida, some people brought a blind man to him and begged him to touch the man.
SLIDE 6
23 Jesus took him by the hand and led him out of the village, where he spit into the man's eyes. He placed his hands on the blind man and asked him if he could see anything.
SLIDE 7
24 The man looked up and said, “I see people, but they look like trees walking around.”
25 Once again Jesus placed his hands on the man's eyes, and this time the man stared. His eyes were healed, and he saw everything clearly. 26 Jesus said to him, “You may return home now, but don't go into the village.”
SLIDE 8
27 Jesus and his disciples went to the villages near the town of Caesarea Philippi. As they were walking along, he asked them, “What do people say about me?”
28 The disciples answered, “Some say you are John the Baptist or maybe Elijah. Others say you are one of the prophets.”
29 Then Jesus asked, “But who do you say I am?”
“You are the Messiah!” Peter replied.
30 Jesus warned the disciples not to tell anyone about him.
Point 1
Our first point is, fast learning is good
SLIDE 9
Game: Biathlon
Instructions
We'll start this point with a game!
In the Olympic Games, they have an event called the biathlon, where people go skiing, and every once in a while they stop skiing and they shoot a gun at some targets. They get points for how fast they are, and also for how many targets they hit. Today, we will be running and shooting nerf guns.
Here are the rules. We will have a relay race with two teams. When it’s your turn to race, you need to stand behind the line and shoot the target.
You can't just stand in one place and shoot. Instead, every time you want to shoot a bullet, run to the far wall and back and then you have one chance to hit the target.
Teacher: give the children a reasonably large target, like a whiteboard, and demonstrate how to shoot the target from behind the line, and where to run between shots.
If you miss, run to the far wall and back and try again. You're done after you shoot the target twice OR you try five times. After five times, you're automatically done and it's the next person's turn on your team. When everyone has had their turn, your team is done.
Teacher: play this game more than once depending on time and interest.
Debrief
We played this game because it's quick to learn. It just takes a minute to learn the rules, and then you can play and have fun. But, just because you start playing, it doesn't mean you are really good at the game right away.
Bible Reference
That's the kind of idea we see in our Bible story. Let's read what the man said when Jesus first placed His hands on him.
Mark 8:24. The man looked up and said, “I see people, but they look like trees walking around.”
Explanation
SLIDE 10
Can you imagine being blind? Sometimes when we meet, we play games where people are blindfolded. Can you imagine having a blindfold on all day and all night? That would be really hard!
In our story, the blind man met Jesus. Jesus spit in his eye,
SLIDE 11
and the blind man could actually see something! The man couldn't see perfectly, because he knew that people shouldn't look like trees, but it was a great start! He must have been really excited.
Jesus actually had the power to heal the man completely the first time. Jesus healed a lot of blind people. This blind man was the only one who needed two steps to be fully healed. Jesus did this on purpose.
When we read the chapters around this story, we understand why. It's because this man was a lot like the disciples who followed Jesus! The twelve disciples had been following Jesus, and they had learned a bunch of things. They had learned that Jesus was the Messiah, which means He was the one God sent to save His people. If we keep reading on in the story, we soon find out that there was a lot of stuff that they didn't understand. So, they were just like the blind man. They were beginning to understand Jesus, and they were excited, but they had a lot more to learn.
Application
That's normal even for us. When we first learn about Jesus, it can be really exciting. We learn that Jesus is our greatest friend, and He gives us power and wisdom. Even if you are just starting off as a Christian, you can learn lessons that will stay with you for the rest of your life.
SLIDE 12
We just need to remember, we don't know everything yet, and there's a lot more to learn. We're still like the blind man who didn't see very well yet.
SLIDE 13
Discussion Question
Let's pause for a discussion question.
What's your favorite thing about knowing Jesus?
Point 2
Our second point is, sometimes we need to slow down and get things right.
SLIDE 14
Game: Cup Pyramid Challenge
Instructions
We'll start our point with a game! It's the cup pyramid challenge! This one is super hard. In a moment, we will need to split into teams of four. Your team will build a pyramid as high as you can.
The pyramid will be a big triangle, with eleven cups on the bottom, and if you finish it, it will be eleven cups high.
You'll have eight minutes to finish. This game is more challenging, but let's see how far you get in eight minutes!
Teacher: form groups of four. Each group should have 66 cups. Keep time so that each group has exactly eight minutes.
Debrief
SLIDE 15
We played this game because it's about slow and steady work. We might be able to put a bunch of cups down quickly, but we haven't finished until we've put the last cup on the pyramid. If we were rushing our construction too much, we need to go back and do things properly the second time, so we can build higher.
Bible Reference
In our Bible story, the blind man was like a pyramid who was half finished. Jesus wasn't done with him after the first bit of healing.
Let's read verse 25 again.
Mark 8:25 (CEV)
Once again Jesus placed his hands on the man's eyes, and this time the man stared. His eyes were healed, and he saw everything clearly.
Explanation
So, the man needed Jesus to keep working on him. In that way, the man was just like the twelve disciples, who had a lot of right ideas about Jesus, but they needed Jesus to keep working on them.
Jesus had a great plan for the disciples. They were going to change the world, and they were going to write parts of the Bible for us. But first, Jesus needed to fix a lot of the bad ideas in their minds.
Application
SLIDE 16
That's what it's like for us too. We all have bad ideas and wrong ideas in our minds, so we need to keep learning and being corrected. There's always more to learn and there are always more ways to grow. If we stop growing, we're in big trouble. Can you imagine having eyes that don't work very well, so that everyone looks like trees walking around? That would be terrible! That's what happens in our hearts if we just learn a few things about Jesus and then stop. However, if we let Jesus keep working on us, we'll keep getting better, and He will do great things with us.
SLIDE 17
Discussion Question
Let's pause for a discussion question.
What is something about the Bible that you don't know very well yet?
SLIDE 18
Conclusion
Let’s wrap up our lesson by going over the big ideas again.
The big question today was: Why do we need to keep learning about Jesus?
Our big idea was:
We need to keep learning about Jesus because we don't get everything right the first time.
1. Fast learning is good, but
2. Sometimes we need to slow down and get things right.
Even if it feels like we’ve heard everything before, we need to keep learning and being corrected. If we do, we will see all of life properly, and God will do great things with us.
SLIDE 19
Main Activity: Wall Decorations
Today we will be making wall decorations, to make the walls more fun!
Wall decorations remind us of our lesson because we can have a good idea and sketch the idea on paper really quickly. But, we can only make a great wall decoration if we pay attention to the little details.
Teacher: have some examples of wall decorations that they might be interested in making up on a screen. You may want them to create decorations ahead of a church event, like a Vacation Bible School, or they can decorate the children’s ministry area together.
We'd love to hear from you!
What can we do better? And what did you enjoy? Your insights will help us to serve churches better!