Welcome back! Today’s lesson is from Genesis 6-9 and last year’s lesson and crafts can be found HERE.

Adam and Eve had their children, and they had children and those children had children and soon, the earth was a pretty busy place! BUT the people forgot to obey God–they did whatever they wanted. This made God very sad, and He decided it was time to start over. ALL the people had to go.

But, there was one man named Noah who obeyed God. God came to Noah and told him to build an ark (like a REALLY big boat). God told Noah exactly how to build it…He gave Noah all the measurements and directions. God ALWAYS has a plan. He told Noah to bring one mommy and one daddy of each kind of animal. For some of the animals, God said to bring 7 daddies and 7 mommies. Then God also told Noah to take every kind of food on the ark with them. (Some for the animals and some for them to grow later).

God warned Noah that it would rain for 40 days and 40 nights. Noah and his wife, and their three boys and the boys’ wives all got on the ark and then it rained and rained and rained….over the WHOLE earth. The Bible says even the highest mountains were covered in water…all the people who disobeyed God were washed away, but Noah and his family (who loved and obeyed God) stayed nice and dry in the ark on top of the water.

The Bible says the earth was flooded for 150 days! (That’s almost half a year!) God sent a big wind and the waters went down. Noah sent out a bird to look for a place to live, but it flew right back (there was no where for it to land.) So Noah waited and then sent out a dove, but it also came back with nothing. He waited a week and sent the dove out again and this time it came back with a branch from an olive tree (that meant there were *some* dry spots, but not enough to leave the ark yet). He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again and this time, the dove didn’t come back (he had found ground or a tree to live in). Noah knew that meant everything was dry enough for them to leave the ark.

God told Noah and his family, it was time to come out!

Noah gave God some of the best animals, and it made God happy. God made another covenant (a promise) with Noah and said “I will never flood the whole earth again. And I will give you a reminder. Every time you see a rainbow (when the sun and rain mix), you can remember this promise that I will never again destroy everything with water.”

For our craft today we made an ark. We used a blue background and cut out our ark shape on brown construction paper. Then, we clipped pictures of animals from magazines and glued those onto our ark. Then we used the rest of the brown paper to make windows so we could peek in and see the animals. (You could also just cut away the ark to make windows…but that proved too tricky for 4 year olds…so we just taped windows on.)

In addition to last year’s videos and resources, we also found:

THIS OLD SCHOOL VIDEO posted by Come with Love.

Thanks for joining us. Love to you all!