After the Easter-induced break from the Armor of God, I decided to jump back into it with a vengeance. Today Asa is doing “Armor of God school” for homeschool and we began our school day by getting decked out in our Armor of God balloons. Nothing like starting a day with some balloon twisting and popping.
I’m actually pretty impressed with my shield skills. They look pretty fierce, dontcha’ think?
Then Asa did a few more Armor of God themed activities:
He loved putting together this little soldier puzzle. I made all the armor pieces but the body outline is the Create-a-Person pad by Melissa and Doug. (<–a super awesome birthday gift from Vanessa last year. We use it all the time!)
I had all these great ideas for a shield. But once Asa remembered that Prince Rilian’s shield had Aslan on it (from the Silver Chair out latest bedtime read), that’s what he wanted. So, we covered a piece of cardboard with red duct tape and a print out of a lion we found online. Not exactly what I was picturing, but he loved it.
I also found a simple matching game in an Armor of God ebook (it’s kind of homeschool-y, devotional with questions and Scripture writing prompts). Lydia and Asa love matching games. They play regular memory or Go Fish. I make matching games for Asa almost every week.
I have to be honest and say we didn’t get a lot of conversation done about the shield of faith. What we mainly discussed was the different parts of Ephesians 6:16…
Also, pick up the shield of faith. With it you can put out all of the flaming arrows of the evil one.
We talked about the devil tempting Adam and Eve, then Jesus in the wilderness. I told them that the devil wants to tempt and attack them, too. Paul describes satan’s attack as flaming arrows. We talked about how hard it would be protected from a flaming arrow–you’d have to use a shield!
Lydia said, “Jesus used God’s Word when he talked to the devil.” (Yay, Lydia!) So, we briefly discussed how faith in God’s Word, His promises and protection is a shield to us. I want to discuss the meaning of “faith” a little bit more. I think we’ll memorize Hebrews 11:1 later this week.
Faith is one of those words that seem intangible. I’m thankful for Scripture giving us such a fabulous concrete word-picture of the shield of faith!
See all of our Armor of God posts here!
We are LOVING using this series in Sunday School – the age range is about 4-12, all together… I wanted to help them to see how these weapons work in real life, & came up with an idea that really flew (literally!) that I would recommend. I thought up lots of things that Satan would use as fiery darts for these kids: eg. “Tempting me to be mean”, “tempting me to lie”, “fear”, “worry”, “selfishness”, etc. I printed them up in groovy font, with room so I could cut around each to shape it like a fiery dart. My kids helped by colouring the ends with red/orange/yellow. Then we attached a peg (orange ones 🙂 to the front of each. After we’d talked all about the shield of faith, I gave each kid one or two darts. I held a cardboard & foil shield out the front. They had to take turns to yell their word/phrase out & throw the dart at me (the pegs make them fly really well, & the paper flutters behind!). As I used the shield to deflect it, I called out a scripture or truth from God that would help me in life with that particular attack. They REALLY liked throwing the darts, but they also took it all on board, as I observed in the week following with my kids. It was heaps of fun, & helped make it practical for them. Thanks again for all your great work in this series!!