Yes, these are big topics for first-through-fourth graders; they are even big topics for the parents! But a game and a (somewhat time-consuming) art project helped make these mysteries more accessible.
The Game: Incarnation Clue Hunt
I posted "clues" on different colors of paper around the room. The were just printed on a 1/4 sheet of paper and folded over, so kids could lift the flap to read them. Staying with their parents, they needed to find 10 different colors of paper around the room (I had 2 of each color hanging to avoid traffic jams) and read the clues. Each student had a tally sheet with 2 columns: God & Human. For each clue, they marked a tally for whether it was evidence that Jesus was human or evidence that Jesus is God. The clues were:
1. We pray to Jesus
2. Jesus died
3. Jesus felt pain
4. Jesus rose from the dead
5. Jesus walked on water
6. Jesus healed the blind, sick, & lame
7. Jesus turned water into wine
8. Jesus was born on Earth
9. Jesus got hungry and thirsty
10. Jesus had parents that he lived with while growing up
Most of the kids decided that 5 of those were "human" clues, and 5 of them were "God" clues. This was the introduction to our first Mystery: the Incarnation. We talked about Mysteries as things in our faith that we believe but can't fully explain, and we read a simple definition of the Incarnation as Jesus becoming human but still being God. Not half and half, but fully both. We remembered that last month when we talked about Creation, we read that God said, "Let
us create people in
our image." So Jesus as God has always existed and never stopped existing, but at the Incarnation Jesus also became human. But why? Well, for a clue to that answer, we went to the "end" of the story (or the new beginning, as it were): we talked about the Paschal Mystery of Jesus suffering, dying, rising, and ascending to bring us forgiveness & eternal life with God.
OK, this part gets a little tough to explain, as Mysteries tend to do. So I used this analogy with the kids (realizing it is imperfect):
Have you ever been using a set of paints, and you try to use the white paint, but your brush isn't 100% clean, and you get a murky, icky color instead? Well, God is like the white paint; God is perfect and without sin. People are not perfect; we all make poor choices and do things we know are wrong - even the Pope sins! Our imperfection can not live with God's perfection, or it wouldn't be perfection anymore - we would be like the dirty brush messing up the white paint. When Jesus died but then rose from the dead and ascended to heaven, he gave us a path to God that forgives all of our sin and "cleans our brushes." Because of Jesus, we can live with our perfect God!
The Project: Life of Jesus Symbol Book
For our art this month, we made a book that gives the "highlights" of the story of Jesus, emphasizing the Incarnation and Paschal Mystery. To fit with our overall Faith Detectives theme of the year, I gave the cover the look of a mystery novel:
As I mentioned, the book was a pretty involved project. It is 2 sheets of construction paper folded in the middle, making 6 interior pages. For each page, the kids had text to cut out & paste in, as well as 2 symbols per page to make & mount on paperclips. The tops of the text boxes were left unglued, so the symbols could be clipped on like this:
On the last page, they glue an envelope to hold all of the symbols:
To make this project, you need to download the
instructions page, which also contains the cover, the
text page, and the
symbols for kids to color. You also need 2 sheets of construction paper, sticky foam or felt harts (2 per child), sandpaper, and red and orange or yellow tissue squares. We used both double-stick tape and glue sticks for adhesives (see instructions). The instructions can be printed on regular weight paper, but the other 2 pages should be on card stock weight.
Finally, we ended with a prayer reflecting on some of Jesus' "I am" statements from the Gospel of John.
Click here to get the pdf of the prayer.
