Grades 1-3
Introductory Activity – Water in the Well
Materials: four buckets, two small cups, masking tape
Form your kids into two teams. Place two buckets filled with water on one side of the room with the kids. Place two other buckets on the other side of the room. Place a line of masking tape between the two buckets for each team. Tell the kids they will scoop water with their cup, walk along the masking tape, and dump their water in the other bucket. Once they’ve dumped their water, they will bring the cup back to their next team member. If someone steps off the tape while carrying water, they must go back to the beginning and start again. After five minutes, stop the game and see who has more water in their bucket. Explain to your kids that in the lesson Jesus asks a Samaritan woman for help to get water from a deep well. As a result, she discovers that Jesus offers her Living Water that will never end.
Live It Out
Game –Soccer Quiz
Materials: masking tape, white paper
Give each child a piece of paper. Create two small soccer goals on the wall with masking tape. Make each goal 12 inches high and 24 inches wide. Form the children into two different teams and line them up about 10 feet away from the goals. Instruct the children to crumple up their paper into a ball. Use the review questions to quiz the children on today’s lesson. Each team will send a representative to you to whisper the answer to you. If they get it right, everyone on their team gets to kick a shot on the goal. Each shot that hits the goal gets a point. If they get the question wrong, no one gets to shoot that round. At the end of the questions, whichever team has scored the most goal wins!
Craft – Water Drop Necklace
Materials: blue paper, blue yarn, scissors, markers, hole punch
Give each child blue paper and instruct them to draw six simple water drops. (Draw a water drop on the board to give them an example.) On five of the water drops, write one word of the Life Point. On the sixth water drop, write John 4:1-42. Instruct the kids to cut out the water drops and hole punch the top. Cut the yarn to the appropriate length to make a necklace. Have them slip the water drops onto the yarn in order and tie the ends of the yarn together to make a necklace. Remind your kids that Jesus showed care to the Samaritan woman and challenge them to show care to everyone they meet this week.
Grades 4-6
Introductory Activity – Sink or Float
Materials: clear container, water, items to put into the water
Fill a large, clear container with water. Put a variety of items on a table and instruct the kids to decide whether each item will sink or float when you put them in the water. After the activity, tell the kids that in today’s lesson, they are going to hear how Jesus taught a woman about God’s truth and love for her using one simple thing – water. Explain how no one liked this woman, yet Jesus still treated her with kindness.
Possible items to use: metal spoon, plastic spoon, leaf, crayon, egg, pencil, small toy car
Live It Out
Game – What Would You Do?
Materials: no materials needed
Form the kids into smaller groups. Tell them you will give them several scenarios. In each scenario they will act out what they would do in that situation to show that they care for someone. Give them several minutes to prepare their skit for each scenario.
Possible scenarios:
A kid is sitting by himself at lunch for the 3rd time this week.
Your teammate isn’t playing well in the basketball game, and she just got benched.
Your friend just got another low grade on his science test.
Say the Life Point together with all your kids, and remind them that Jesus showed care for everyone, no matter who they were.
Craft – Showing Care
Materials: blue construction paper, colored pencils
Hand out blue construction paper and colored pencils to all your kids. Instruct them to draw and color a well in the middle of the page. Tell them to write Family in the upper left corner of the page, School in the upper right, Neighborhood in the bottom left, and Sports team in the bottom right. Next to each category, instruct them to write someone’s name from that area of their life that they need to show care for that week. Next to the name, tell them to write down how they can show care for that person.
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