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The Jesus Storybook Bible has become one of our most treasured books: the beautiful illustrations, the animated stories, the beautiful way they all connect to the “big picture” of Jesus. When I found out about the amazing blog hop for this revolutionary book, I signed up as soon as I could to be a part of it. This is the story found on page 108, “The Warrior Leader” about Joshua and the Battle of Jericho. If you want more information on the books and resources available from Sally Lloyd Jones, check out the widget that applies to you below (I included both amazon.ca and amazon.com for all my readers).
I spent a lot of time thinking and praying about an activity that would be fun and memorable, and help to impress this story upon my children’s heart. Even telling them a story as beautifully written as the Jesus storybook bible, is not quite the same as them doing it themselves. I came up with an idea to basically build and re-enact the story. I think the process of taking our time to build a thought out and structured wall and then seeing how it would have happened took this story to the next level for my kids. All four of them were so into it and they can spit out the story nearly word for word after our fun project.
Build Your Own Jericho and Marshmellow Walls!
*You need about 30-40 minutes for the prep, story, and activity so make sure you have the time set aside distraction free to get the full benefit from it!
1. Head out to the store or rummage through your cupboards to find supplies. You will need about 2 bags of regular marshmellows and one package of bamboo skewers. We also used small toothpicks to secure the wall sections together to create a self standing wall when we were done. If you want to do that, grab some toothpicks while you are at it.
2. Set out your supplies before you begin reading:
- Marshmellows in a bowl
- Bamboo skewers
- lego or blocks or whatever you will be using to build your “city”
3. Read the story together. You will find it on page 108, you only need a few minutes for this and maybe a few minutes added on for questions (one of the great things about the Jesus Storybook Bible is that the stories are short and not too complex, great for your younger listeners).
4. Build your city! We used jumbo lego so it wouldn’t take as long. The kids loved that I got down on the floor and did this with them. We sang a song and built our city, all working together too add important elements (including the crucial leopard piece according to my five year old)
5. Build your walls! You will need about 6 sections depending on the size of your city. This portion of the activity took about 10 minutes.
- Make two skewers with three marshmellows on them (one on the middle on one on each end) these are your vertical side pieces.
- Make three skewers with just one single marshmellows in the middle, these are your horizontal middle pieces. Lay them across and attach the ends into the vertical side pieces
- take one empty skewer and carefully skewer the three middle marshmellows.
Voila! You have a wall section. Make as many of these as you need, our ‘city’ was only about 1’x2′ so we needed 6 sections.
6. (optional) Attach your wall sections on the sides with small toothpicks, you can just lay your wall on the side of your city structure, but we wanted ours freestanding.
7. Now the fun part, walk around your wall seven times and the last time, let the kids roar as loud as they can! Then let them tear down the walls! (or in our case, the entire city of Jericho, poor thing).
Discussion
But I also believe that God is a God of mystery and wonder and power. I think, in my heart of hearts, that there was no scientific explanation. That it was comical really, to walk around a wall and then yell and blow horns. I think that the Israelites, for all their failures and sins were amazing to trust Him in this completely off the wall command. But I think that it shows His power in such an incredible way, something so completely ordinary (walking and yelling, lets be real) was used to crumble the entire wall all around the city!
I hope that my kids saw a bit of the wonder and miraculous power of God when they acted out this activity. As we built something with our own hands and spent the time to design our city and wall and then imagined the power of that moment. I hope they never forget this lesson and I know they enjoyed it, I mean, we got to eat marshmellows!I hope you love it as much as we did and be sure to check out the other activities to go along with the entire Jesus Storybook Bible, there is one for every story in there, it is a great (and free) way to build your own Bible curriculum and make it come alive for your children.
