This year Matt and I are teaching the 4th grade Bible Class on Sundays at our church. Our area of focus this year is the Gospels. I have made some playdough mats geared to older kids to help reinforce some of the concepts we are teaching.
For this particular class session, we introduced the 4 gospel writers, talked about their backgrounds and discussed the major emphasis of each book. Then students had some time to process this learning through the playdough mats. We encouraged them to think through what they had learned about each writer--what could they add with playdough details to illustrate these things?
Our big kids had a lot of fun working with playdough--for many of them it had been years since they had used it, so it was fun for them to spend some time doing a kinestetic activity! It also encouraged some higher-level thinking and processing skills to mull through the lesson we'd just had.
Some of the kids were hesitant and needed some teacher prompting to get started and think through what they could add. Others zoomed right off and were adding little playdough details left and right!!
For logistics--I like to print out the sheets and put them in page protectors, then I can change them out as we used different mats. Once I have introduced this particular mat doing a group time, I can reuse it at a class starter--an activity that is set out for children to begin working on as they stagger in at arrival time.
Click
HERE to download a fullsize, printable version.
