Sunday school: Jesus Heals a Man Born Blind

Recently I have felt God speaking about coming from a place of blindness into vision, or darkness into light.  So when I was given the Sunday school theme Jesus' miracles: Healing, I knew what story we should look at.

When I am on Sunday school or doing projects, the first thing I do is pray about it.  I think it's a really important job to be teaching the children about God and so we should really do it properly!  I think it's important to listen to God and hear how He would lead the class forward.  After or during prayer, I write down any thoughts that come to me as a sort of starting place.  Often the ideas come slowly over a few days and I just keep praying about it and noting things down as I go.  When I have some solid starting points I think about how to communicate these messages to the kids in a way that they will enjoy and understand.  I like to look on-line to see how other people have done similar projects or if I have an idea but am not sure of the best materials to use, I look it up to see if I can find any good tips!

For this week's Sunday school I would be working with the younger children (aged 3-11) which is a fun group to work with but can be quite difficult since the ages are so spread out.  From working with the group before I knew the younger half really enjoys colouring in and the older half would probably prefer something a bit more demanding.  I began thinking of ways to involve colouring in for the younger half but I wanted to make it a bit more exciting than a straight forward sheet.  After a bit of research, a lot of thought and a couple of trial runs this is what I came up with:

The above picture is actually three separate copies of the sheet:
1.  Left Side  The man is blind
2.  Middle Open the flaps and fold them round the back to reveal Jesus putting mud on the man's eyes.
3.  Right side Turn the sheet around to show the man who is now able to see!

This is what the sheet looked like when it was drawn out before folding:

Side one

Side two

I drew it out in thin black pen and then scanned and copied the number needed.  It did take me a couple of attempts before I got the image to line up properly because the printer cut margins I didn't plan...but I got there in the end!

Pin The Tail On The Donkey

We began the lesson with a game of pin the tail on the donkey as a fun way to introduce the topic.  The kids went crazy for it which I did not expect!  I actually began to wonder if I'd made a serious mistake because I thought they'd never settle down again but thankfully it worked perfectly and lasted just the right length of time.  Once everyone had taken their turn we sat down and I asked if they had found it easy or difficult and when I asked what would make it easier and they all replied "If we could see!!"  This made an good introduction for the story of the blind man which is what we looked at next.

For the telling of the story I decided to make it interactive and get the children involved.  I made a head out of a paper plate and I covered it with some clear adhesive film (the kind you use to cover jotters) to make it waterproof.  I then made two small ovals of tissue paper (three layers each) and drew closed eyes on them.  I stuck them on to the plate using a tiny bit of double sided tape (very tiny indeed!) so that it was just enough to hold them in place but not so sticky that they would be there permanently or leave a mark when removed.

I began telling the story and when the Blind man was introduced I held up the face I had made with the eyelids stuck down.  When it came to the part in the story where Jesus made mud, the children volunteered to help make real mud; one child spooned soil into a tub, another poured water in and another stirred it together.  When I read out that Jesus put the mud on the man's eyes, a couple of children to spooned some mud onto the paper man's eyes.  When Jesus told the man to wash in the pool, a couple of children washed the mud off the paper face.  When they scraped the mud off and wiped it with a wet cloth, the tissue paper eyelids got wiped off too and revealed the man's eyes.  It worked much better than expected and there was a brilliant moment where lots of the children were like "What?!  How can he see now?!"  and they tried to work out how it had been done.

Equipment needed on the day:

Small bag of soil
Water
Tub and spoon for mixing the mud
Cloth for washing the mud off
Kitchen roll for when finished

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After the story of the Blind Man we quickly looked at the story of the Roman officer who asked Jesus to heal his servant by giving the order from where he was rather than coming to the house.  From here we discussed questions like "Does Jesus have to be right next to someone to heal them?  and "Does God still heal people today?"  We went on to talk about praying for healing and what it means to 'lay hands' on people and why we do that.  It was after this point that the children split into their groups for the activities.

While the younger group started their colouring in, the older group focussed on praying for the sick.  On an A1 sheet of white paper I wrote "God, please use these hands to heal the sick." in bubble writing.  The children chose some coloured paper and drew around their hands on it.  They wrote prayers on the paper hands, cut them out and stuck them on the big sheet.  As we neared the end, they also coloured in some of the writing and a few of the younger children who had finished their colouring in came over to join in the healing hands poster.

So there you have it...Jesus healed a Man Born Blind and did you know he still heals today!

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