Play and Explore: Abraham with 3-5s

One of the best bargains I've recently bought is my pop up two man tent- reduced to £15!  When I'd spent an hour figuring out how to collapse it again I was sorted!

The children absolutely love the tent so, when we had a story when we could legitimately use it we did!

We told the story of God calling Abraham out from the place he lived and sending him on a journey.  Of course, Abraham had to live in a tent!  After we'd walked, run, hopped and jumped round the room, we popped out the tent and got inside.

Next we got the stars out on the floor of the tent and talked about God promising Abraham that he would have children as many as the stars in the sky...

Then we told of the three men visiting Abraham, sharing food and telling him that next year he would have a son even though he was very old...

We all practised laughing which was fun!

Then we got the baby doll out and celebrated because Sarah and Abraham had had a child even though they were very old.  It was much easier to tell the story in an active way as we went along and the children enjoyed being involved.

We made hats out of paper plates and paper stars, colouring the plates with black and blue crayons to represent the night sky:

And then we let the children choose play activities to help explore the events of the story...

...playing in the tent and playing with the stars or acting out the story with paper tents and little people.

 Best of all, they loved looking after the baby dolls!  As they played we were able to re iterate parts of the story and explore what they thought and felt.

We finished by putting stars into our special treasure chest and saying thank you to God for our families.  Some of the younger children decided to kiss the star as they did it and this caught on with everyone else!