Pack Your Bags for an Impactful Lesson on Forgiveness
Use this lesson to teach kids an impactful lesson about the power of forgiveness, like when we forgive others and when God forgives us.
Items to Pack:
- A Bible,
- a marble-sized piece of Silly Putty for each child, and
- several pages of newspaper comic strips.
Tour Guide Tip
Collect comic pages for several days. Cut comic strips apart so kids can work in pairs or trios. One “egg” of Silly Putty holds enough for two children.
Fun Fact: Silly Putty was discovered during World War II by researchers trying to make artificial rubber. It was first marketed to the public in 1950. More than three hundred million eggs of Silly Putty have been sold.That’s more than 4,500 tons!
Scenic Route
Make your own putty by mixing 1/2 cup white glue with 1/4 cup corn starch. For best results, add the liquid starch 1 tablespoon at a time, mixing thoroughly before adding more starch.
Pack Your Bags for an Impactful Lesson on Forgiveness
Open your Bible and read Jeremiah 31: 34b and Ephesians 4:32. Say: These verses remind us that when God gives us forgiveness, he no longer remembers the wrong things we’ve done. God asks us to forgive others just as he forgives us.
Give each child a piece of Silly Putty modeling clay, and demonstrate how to transfer a picture by pressing the Silly Putty over the comic strip. Show children how they can stretch the putty to create different facial expressions on the comic strip characters. Let kids create angry or mad faces from the comic strip characters with the putty. Then have them squeeze the Silly Putty into a ball to erase the picture. Give kids a few minutes to transfer and erase several pictures.
Then, ask:
- Suppose you transferred a picture and never erased it. How is that like when we don’t forgive someone?
- How is erasing pictures like God forgiving us?
- What feelings do you have knowing that God doesn’t remember your sins?
- How do you feel knowing that God expects you to forgive others just as he’s forgiven you?
Say: When we don’t forgive someone, it is as if we have a picture of that person’s sin in our heads. We keep looking at it over and over. God asks us to forgive others and put those pictures out of our minds.
This activity was excerpted from Group’s Kids’ Travel Guide to the Lord’s Prayer. Order all four books in the Kid’s Travel Guides set, with journey’s to the Ten Commandments, the Fruit of the Spirit, the Armor of God, and the Lord’s Prayer. Each book has 13 lessons and includes reproducible handouts.
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