February 14, 2017

This month we were teaching the Parable of the Sower (or the Parable of the Soils) from Mark 4:1-20. Jesus teaches that only one response brings life – hearing and accepting God’s word about him. We had at least one activity for each of the four soils.

Celebration

We learnt ‘The Ballad of Farmer Phil’ by Colin Buchanan. Like all Colin’s songs it’s catchy and fun but gets the point of the story across too.

Activities

Grass heads
Cheap tights, a scoop of grass seed and some compost. The nose was made using a loom band. Googly eyes required – of course! Stick them on after dipping the head in water to get the seed growing.

We made our demo grass head about ten days in advance so the hair had started to grow.

Grass Head Bodies
We made a body for the grass heads by wrapping coloured paper around the polystyrene cup and sticking/drawing things on it to make clothes.

Thorn Paintings
We painted pictures of pretty flowers using sponges and brushes. Then we dipped string in paint and used it to print a tangle of thorns.

Sowing the Seed Game
We laid out a field with areas for the path, rocks, thorns and birds (complete with soft toy birds). We scattered ‘seeds’ (marble-sized polystyrene balls) and counted those on the good soil. Remember – no points for those elsewhere!

Mosaics
Our ‘rocky ground’ activity was mosaics. We bought these in kit form via the internet.

Pecking Bird Puppets
The birds we made had pipe-cleaner feet so they could be attached to the wrist and flown around.

Rock Cakes
Our cooking activity this month was rock cakes (of course!) We used a simple recipe that didn’t require any weighing of ingredients – only scoops.

1/3 cup Self Raising Flour
1 tsp Sugar
1 tsp Margarine
Sultanas or Chocolate Chips
250ml milk mixed with 1 egg. Pour in enough to make it dough like.

See the original recipe with instructions and cooking temperature.