What do you know about Jonah?

Good Morning, I hope you all have a wonderful day!!

As I mentioned in my last post, my class is studying Jonah through the month of October so that we are prepared for our area wide bible bowl. I always find it interesting to actually read through the whole book when you first start a lesson plan. Jonah was no exception.

Before I read through the book I asked my kids what they knew about the prophet Jonah. All they could tell me was that he had disobeyed God and was swallowed by a big fish. Really??? Of course all of this is true, but what about the rest of it?

So often when we are teaching our children we choose to go to picture books or child learners to teach about God's word, but in doing so we are leaving out many important parts of the Bible. The Bible is the inspired word of God, all of it should be taught, not just the parts that we think will be pleasing to our children.

Jonah was a man that feared God. His pride and fear led him to believe he could run from God rather than do as he was bid. Why was he afraid? Jonah was a Hebrew and was asked to go to Nineveh to preach repentance to a city he considered his enemies. God wanted him to go and ask the people of Nineveh to turn from their wicked ways or they would be destroyed. Now, Jonah feared God, but he also feared the people of Nineveh, he feared that if he went and preached about repentance God would decide not to destroy the great city of Ninevah and then where would he be? So he ran from God and away from Ninevah.

I have included the link to a few worksheets that will help you teach about Jonah and his fear of God. All worksheets were made at puzzlefast.com and come with an answer sheet.

http://www.puzzlefast.com/en/puzzles/20141008798840

http://www.puzzlefast.com/en/puzzles/20141008846569

http://www.puzzlefast.com/en/puzzles/20141008940413

http://www.puzzlefast.com/en/puzzles/20141008758482

Thank you for joining me today, I hope that you will follow along as I tell more of Jonah's story. I look forward to any questions or comments so please feel free to respond. If you have any trouble with the links please contact me so that I can fix them. 

Thanks,

Oni

Good morning! I hope you have all had a blessed day so far  :) . 

My name is Oni Brewer and I am a stay-at-home mom, wife, full-time college student, caregiver and youth bible study teacher. 

I started as a nursery teacher at our church, Griffith Church of Christ, 2 years ago. I had the pleasure of teaching the birth to 4 year old class. I must admit that I never had more than 3 students at one time, but at that age they are certainly a handful. It is amazing to see that even at such an early age they were able to pick up on songs and stories from the bible. I love to hear about how they shared their own stories with their families outside of church. 

About 2 months ago, 2 of my own children started studying for our area wide bible bowl. I noticed that with everything else going on, we didn't really take the time to study our materials! So I approached the other teachers at church and asked to switch with them. They graciously agreed and I became the youth study teacher for grades 4-7. 

Our area wide bible bowl decided that this year we would study the 12 minor prophets. I was excited because I had never really studied them before and I knew that I would be learning right along with them. I decided that instead of just studying the questions that were given to us, we would study the entire book for that whole month and so on for each book of the minor prophets.

I wanted to make an actual lesson out of the books we were studying so that if other students visited our church they wouldn't feel lost or out of place. I turned to the internet, looking for worksheets, color sheets, anything that would help us in our studies. To my surprise there is very little in the way of children's study guides for these 12 books (with the exception of Jonah).

I then started thinking about all the other mom's that might be looking for this kind of information but might not have the time to do so much research. So I decided that I would create some worksheets, start a blog, and share them with those that wished to study the word of God. 

I found many wonderful webpages that could help me (and you too if you have time and want to create a puzzle). 

The following two are my favorite:

http://puzzlefast.com

http://worksheets.theteacherscorner.net

Anyway, I will be sharing some of these puzzles and worksheets as we progress in our studies and I hope that they are as useful for you as they have been for me.

I welcome any comments, questions or requests and would be happy to help you expand your child's knowledge of God.

Sincerely,

Oni Brewer

P.S. for the month of October we are studying the prophet Jonah :)