Last week’s Sunday School lesson was taught after a week where I’d had a heavy cold. I had to make some changes to my plans because I hadn’t been able to do the necessary preparation. However, as it turned out, the lesson went very well.
The story was the parable of the unforgiving servant. Not the easiest of lessons with two young children, but a necessary one.
Something I find can be useful when tackling hard-to-understand concepts in Sunday School is to use a picture book which deals with that concept as an illustration. So this week we looked at a little Charlie and Lola book (a spin-off from the TV show, rather than an original book by Lauren Child) called I Am Extremely Absolutely Boiling. Lola is cross with Arnold because he knocked her ice cream on the floor and didn’t say sorry – or share his ice cream. She has to learn to forgive…
My pupils responded to the story (which I simplified) and it prepared the way well for the lesson.
I try and think of different ways to make the story come alive. This week, I made my own visual aids:
The idea was that I would use the speech bubbles to reinforce the point that the dialogue between the king and the servant, and the servant and his friend, was the same. However, as so often happens, theory was very different from practice and I got my visual aids muddled up and only used the speech bubbles in the second half of the story! However my older pupil still seemed to grasp that point of the story.
I finished the lesson with a gospel application: the king forgave the servant the debt so he had nothing to pay back – the king took the loss of the money in his place, and God forgives our sins because Jesus paid the price for our sin, dying in our place.
I had intended to reinforce this message home by making coin covered crosses. But, as I said, I was ill and I just wasn’t able to get the necessary materials together.
At first I thought I was going to have to resort to a colouring sheet. But then I found this image. That made me think of the technique of making a little book out of a sheet of A4 paper. So I got busy in Publisher…
My pupils really enjoyed colouring this booklet in, and we were able to talk about forgiveness and times when we might have to forgive, as God forgives us.
So that was my Sunday School lesson. Next week: the parable of the two sons and the vineyard.
Coloured Fragments 