Day 7 & 8
I will admit I had to do some studying myself to wrap my head around this next lesson so I could teach it to the kids simply and clearly. Sometimes using little felt people and play dough with flags helps. (See them below).
Under Joshua’s command, the Israelites finally conquered the land of Canaan. 🎶”And the walls came tumbling down”🎵 Joshua renewed the covenant between God and His chosen people. Because of this each tribe received their inheritance in the land. “And these are the countries which the children of Israel inherited in the land of Canaan...” (Joshua 14:1)
The kids and I used The Duet Podcast Workbook to color the map of the land of their inheritance. (Don’t mind the play dough stuck to the page) 😜
We used popsicle sticks and glue to make flags of the 12 tribes plus Manasseh and Ephraim. (I cut out my flags from the workbook.) We stuck them into play dough balls that my 3 year old made and put them in order from oldest to youngest.
KINGS
Then we talked about how eventually the Israelites decided they wanted a king like other nations. Not a good idea.
Their first king was Saul from the tribe of Benjamin. But he was wicked so God gave the throne to the tribe of Judah and his descendants. The next king was King David. You know him. As a boy he fought Goliath. Took Bathsheba to wife and had their son Solomon. Here is a Veggie Tale version of David and Goliath.
Dave and the Giant Pickle
*Real quick note - I know I’ve mentioned our storybook bibles and Veggie Tales before but they are so good for young ones and my kids love them. I didn’t want to skip the story of David and Goliath because I believe kids need more stories of righteous bravery—warriors who fought with God’s strength. Our children are in the Lord’s battalion after all.
The Bathsheba story is disguised in another Veggie Tales story called “King George and the Ducky“ which is also a classic but chose not to tie that story to David. The real story is a little "mature" for my kids.
Then, the final king before the kingdom of Israel split was Solomon. He was known for his wisdom, wealth and for building the first permanent temple. (The felt temple below was also used as the great and spacious building and the felt people were used last year in Come Follow Me lessons. Ha. We made it work.)
After Solomon’s death the Israelites fought over who should be king. In 930 BC, the ten northern tribes split from the House of David under a new king named Jeroboam. They became known as the Kingdom of Israel or the Northern Kingdom. The tribes of Judah and Benjamin remained loyal to the House of David under King Rehoboam (Solomon’s son) and became known as the Kingdom of Judah or the Southern Kingdom. You can see this represented by this lovely workbook page below.
Then we used the play dough flags for the final part of the lesson which was to show the Assyrians coming out of the north, capturing the Northern Kingdom and taking the ten tribes captive. I just grabbed them all and took them away from the map. Ha. (The kingdom of Judah will be next.)
From this time forward the ten tribes became “lost” from history. I wanted to explain to my kids that the ten tribes aren’t lost in the sense that we need to find them (like “hide and seek”) but that we lost track of who was who. The Israelites married non-Israelites blending their different tribes and we don’t have a record of what happened to them after the Assyrians came in 721 BC. The people in the tribe of Judah were the record keepers so our scriptures continued with them. Isaiah came from the tribe of Judah. More on him next time. Technically some of the northern tribes split and went further north while the rest intermarried and spread the blood of Israel throughout the world. But the simplest explanation is that the tribes "lost" their identity after Assyria took them captive. I think that story will have to do for now considering my kids are 5 and 3.
Anyway, the flags and felt people kept us busy playing long after the “lesson” was over and I certainly learned a lot.
Commentaires