The book of Job in the Old Testament is one of the books that I think lots of folks shy away from. And I understand that. When we first found out that Job was part of our Bible Bowl material this year, I’ll admit to a bit of fear.
“How am I going to help my girls understand Job?”
“How am I going to help the younger Bible bowl students understand Job?”
“What in the world are activities that can help us all understand Job?”
Job is a person that we intentionally study a bit in our bible curriculum in church. It is one reason we like Bible Study Guide for All Ages – it doesn’t shy away from hard stories and it covers all of the Bible in four years for all ages. Still, I have been looking for material on Job for a while for Bible classes so I knew what was – or wasn’t – out there.
Because it can seem overwhelming to study a character with youngsters that we don’t truly understand ourselves, I thought I would share with you some of the materials I found and some of the activities we are using.
(none of these are affiliate links; they are being shared to make it easier for your to find these materials if you are interested)
What’s In The Bible Vol 8 – covers what they title The Writings and includes Job. We call these books the books of poetry but it was easy enough for the students to see that a different name doesn’t change the content or where it is found in the Bible. This is a fun series featuring puppets and lots of laughters. We always expand upon and make sure the kids understand truth after watching something from this series but I have not found anything that teaches wrongly, they often just don’t expound upon something to that point that makes it fully what the Bible teaches.
Kid’s Korner (BibleWise.com)- We found a play about Job. We pulled out puppets and the students read through the play. It is not straight out of the Bible and thus is really just a simple overview. But, it is written kind of funny and it helps the kids get the big ideas from the story in their heads.
Book: A Patient Man from Uz by Kyle Butt – This story in rhyme goes all the way through the story of Job. It isn’t fancy and it skips quite a bit of the repetitive parts of the book of Job. However, it does a wonderful job of going through the story and hitting the high points.
Bible Road Trip Year Two covers the book of Job. We are using some things from it. Danika Cooley did a wonderful job with the program. We are also using a number of resources that she lists in that program, including The Baker Illustrated Bible, 365 Great Bible Stories, and Encountering the Old Testament. Each of these resources has a section on Job.
Book: God’s Servant Job by Douglas Bond – Another children’s book that I have been using to just help the students get the overall story into their head.
Book: Tried and True Job from Arch Books – We have many of the Arch Books series in our church library. They have a good approach to difficult Bible passages and this is just another of those that we like.
I also really like this overview video. We have used some of the others they do for Ruth and Esther. Here is the video for Job.
The last thing I want to share with you is HOW I work with these kiddos. They are a fantastic group of children but they are children. That means they are restless when we have a 3 hour block scheduled. Even 2 hours is tough. So, I let them move. If we need to do something at the table, I let them get up and hop, skip, jump, or run every ten minutes. I use our Break Bucket from home often.
We have sets of questions we work with that are provided by the Lads to Leaders program. We do all sorts of active things. It helps the kids remember and understand when they are moving and answering. For example, last weekend I took the kiddos outside and for each correct answer they got (really, we only work with right answers; if I don’t think they know the right answer, we just repeat rather than chance a wrong answer getting stuck in our heads) they could take three steps along the white lines in the parking lot. Another movement we did was to jump up and down, off and on the parking blocks. Nothing fancy. Took no work from me but the kids really enjoyed it and came away with a better understanding of Job.
Movement, rhyme, puppets, videos – anything I can do to help the kids strengthen their knowledge of the Bible. That is the goal of Bible Bowl.
Know God More.
At Home.
Tagged: Bible, Bible Bowl, Elementary, Lads to Leaders
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