Matthew 2 - Preschool Sunday School

Our Sunday school lesson today was from Matthew 2 - the wise men visiting Jesus.  So, after we talked about all the gifts the children had gotten and given for Christmas, we turned back to the wise men, and talked about why we give gifts. 

While we were talking, we were building a house from wooden blocks, so when we talked about the wise men, I pointed out that when the wise men arrived in Bethlehem, Jesus was referred to as a child instead of a baby, and the wise men found him in a house rather than the stable.  Then, we moved the little people from the Nativity stable to our newly built block house, ready for the wise men's visit.

Of course, you can't talk about wise men without talking about the star they followed.  To introduce that, we played a game of find the stars.  I had "hidden" (or placed) plastic, glow in the dark, stars around the room.  When we were ready to play, I turned off the lights, and let the children look for the glowing stars.  Our room, with a window in the door, was just dim enough for the stars to glow, but not so dark as to make the searching risky.

Once all the stars were found, we made our own stars from craft sticks and glitter glue... 

...and while those dried, I paraphrased the story from Matthew 2, while the children had a snack of pretzel stick stars (made of pretzel sticks held together with melted peanut butter chips, following the directions I had used with my own children a few years back).

Finally, we worked on learning our verse - a paraphrased and shortened version of Matthew 2:11, by following the outline of a masking tape star on the floor, singing a part of our verse (to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" - causing some words to be stretched out to fit the tune) for each of the five lines of the star (sort of like what's pictured below).

By the time the children had each walked the star, with the rest of us singing along to help, the children all had the verse - including the reference - down, pretty well, and parents were arriving at the door, marking the end of our Sunday school hour for another week.