The Story of Joseph

Hi Godly Play Teachers, Welcome to our lesson for September 7, The Story of Joseph, found in Genesis 37:1-31 and 49:1-6. (The script is found in the pink Enrichment Presentations for Fall book, p.51-57.)

Since we just presented the Story of Jacob last week, this is the perfect time to talk about Jacob's son Joseph.  This story will help the children answer the question of how the people of God moved to Egypt and became slaves--which will help the Moses story and the Exodus story make more sense.

I'm sure that the children will find many parts of the story interesting- like the idea of Joseph being the favorite son, the sibling rivalry between the brothers, the enslavement and imprisonment of Joseph, the idea that dreams mean something, and the repairing of the relationship between Joseph and his brothers.

Ideas for our Make A Gift for God Time:

Remember that the activity will mean more to the children the more choices they have in how they decide what "work" to do and how they will accomplish it.

Children could recreate the story in some way.
1. Children could make a coat of many colors.
          There are lots of ways they could do this. Several are described here. If the children want to make a coat of construction paper and trimmings, I'll have construction paper, rickrack, buttons, etc on our cart at the end of the hall.

2. You could let the children pick scenes from Joseph's life to draw out and put them together to   make a mural of the different scenes. You could include in these the dreams he interpreted. We have plenty of huge mural paper.

 3. Kids could make Egyptian costume pieces and act out parts of the story. Costume pieces are shown here. We have all sorts of fabric, beads, card stock, etc for the costumes. I'll pull some to have on the cart at the end of the hall.

4. You could also help the children explore what God is teaching us through Joseph's story--how he mends his relationship with his brothers, despite everything, how he remains faithful to God in the middle of his troubles, and how God uses Joseph throughout his life. Could the children sketch and then paint with water colors ( or use marker or crayon) the scene of Joseph reuniting with his brothers? Maybe this could be a class project. Watercolors will be on my cart.

5. Don't forget that one choice for a child's work can always be to retell the story (using the materials that the teacher used) to another child. They love to handle the materials themselves and can use the laminated card to check themselves, to make sure they include all the parts of the story.

Hope these ideas help!
Love, Becky