Jonah Craft

Some of my favorite books, as a child, were the rhyming Bible stories by Arch Books. I still have quite a few of them, and pull them out once and a while to read to the children. They've held up remarkably well for 35 cent paperbacks, considering some of them were passed down to me from my older brother's collection, making them well over 40 years old.

Today, I pulled out The Man Caught By A Fish by M. M. Brem, and illustrated by Jim Roberts. I love the way Roberts drew the fish in the story, to resemble a giant goldfish, instead of the whale traditionally depicted in children's versions of the Jonah story. In fact, it inspired us to make our own Jonah craft.

I used a Rainbow Fish template from DLTK-Kids.com, to cut out a fish shape from the center of two pieces of blue construction paper, for each craft. And, I traced out a template from Brem's story, of Jonah praying, that I cut out of black construction paper.

Meanwhile, the girls were covering sheets of contact paper, with small squares of orange tissue paper.

When the sheets were completely covered in tissue paper, we laid the Jonah on top, and covered the whole thing with another sheet of contact paper, sticky side in.

Then, they glued the blue construction paper, with the fish cut out, on the front, and back of the contact paper. Tip: Be careful to put the glue on the right side of the cutouts, so the fish shapes will line up, on each side of the contact paper.

I trimmed them up, and we hung them on the window. We hung them, with Jonah on the backside, so he only shows up inside the fish, when the sunlight is streaming through.

VeggieTale fans, cue the Newsboys.

It's great to be a homeschooler.