Week's Bible Focus-Acts 2:42-47

Each week we review the past week's lessons....we usually revisit one or two of the past manipulatives quickly.  This week we spent Monday reviewing.  Later in the week we added the new story.  We read Acts 2:42-47 out of the Children's Bible.  I had prepared (in a small basket) some plastic coins (enough for one for each clothespin), some corks (to serve as bread), some wooden spools (to serve as water), some fabric (for clothes) and some wooden blocks for building a temple.  I just searched around and grabbed items I had that would represent the actual items.  Really anything would work, and I encourage you to use items that just REPRESENT the real items instead of always creating manipulatives that look like the actual item--this encourages the children to use their imagination and think abstractly (representation). 

We talked about how the people shared everything and took care of one another.  So we acted out sharing food, money, water and clothes.  We built the "temple" and took the people there.  We got our "apostle popsicle sticks out" so the people could listen to the apostle's teaching (we cover Judas now since he is no longer in the stories since he's died). 

Then we pretended to break bread and take communion together with the people and I got out a little juice and cracker--Q LOVES pretending to take communion.  Through "practicing" she is beginning to learn what the real elements mean and why we use them.