We are approaching Holy Week, a time when Christians remember and celebrate the week leading to Easter. When possible, I love to make and share projects that reflect my faith, especially when it comes to Easter. So today I'm sharing some patterns for making felt board pieces to tell the stories of Jesus.
If you are over a certain age and grew up in Sunday School or Awana, you may have experienced learning about the Bible on a felt board or "flannelgraph." In our tech-heavy culture, that seems like several lifetimes ago. And yet, the slow calm of felt pieces to tell stories is still effective
My dad helps in the special needs ministry at my church and I designed these simple shapes for him to use while teaching. Would you believe we've actually been doing a felt board on video? It's true. Even during this pandemic year when we haven't gathered in person, we worked with low-tech materials while presenting it though modern technology. And it's worked well.
It will also work well in your home. You can read from the Bible and use the pieces to teach your child, or you can let them act out the stories with the figures. It's as easy as cutting some simple shapes out of felt.
I started with several brightly colored people figures. There's also some animals. The pig and sheep have pieces that need to be glued together (this is better than dealing with loose pieces for them). And then we have some extra pieces that help tell the stories: a crown, bandages, and so on.
By the way, I just cut all the shapes out of wool blend felt, and I used my favorite freezer paper cutting technique!
We made our own felt board by covering a stretched canvas with flannel. We stretched the flannel around the sides and attached it with a staple gun. But any flannel/felt board will do!
Now, let's take a look at some stories we used this for!
We started with some parables Jesus told, and we made a point of saying that Jesus told these stories to help us learn about God's Kingdom. They aren't like real things that happened. Also, I made a point of using the purple person to represent Jesus or God the Father in any of the parables or events. It's another layer of learning what these things mean. First up: The Good Samaritan. You can see here how we used the bandages, showing how the Samaritan stopped to help the man by the road. We used other figures to walk by and the money bag showed up when taking the man to the inn.
The Forgiving King (sometimes this parable is known as The Unforgiving Servant). For this one, it just uses a few figures, the crown, and some money bags.
The Loving Father (this parable is commonly known as The Prodigal Son). In this story we've got the father and the two sons. We also used the money, the pig (because it's so much fun to include the son wanting to eat pig slop!), and a heart.
By the way, you may notice that the last two stories, we used titles that put the emphasis on the positive or the hero in the story. That was in the curriculum we follow at church, and I love it.
The Good Shepherd. One figure, the shepherd's crook, and a sheep. We didn't think it was really necessary to have 99 sheep to leave behind, and so I just made one. But we did pull out and show a bunch of cotton balls for the visual of all these sheep. That would be fun for you too!
Once we finished the parables section of our lessons, we've kept up the felt figures. The latest was when Jesus brings a child into the middle of the group of disciples and tells them that they need to be like children. Obviously this required a smaller figure!
And for Holy Week, we have...
Palm Sunday: several figures, the Donkey, several palm branches and coats
The Last Supper: at least several figures (or Jesus and the 12 disciples!), the bread, and the cup
Good Friday: Jesus on the cross figure, the cross, a few extra figures, and the heart (for John 3:16)
Easter: several figures and the empty tomb
Accension: several figures and the cloud (I also added the crown for King Jesus!)
What other pieces would you add to this set?
Also, if you're looking for some good faith-based resources at a bundled bargain price (50 resources for $29.99!), check out the Christian Living Bundle. I'm a contributor and am excited to help make this available. But it's here for just four days, so hop on over to take a look!
These are great. How about a little rooster for Peter denying Jesus?
ReplyDeleteThat would be so cute!
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