Aim to appreciate the beauty of God’s creation

Aim
* to appreciate the beauty of God’s creation
* to learn that God invested all of his heart in creating

Materials
Pictures of each day of creation
Photos showing the beauty of creation
Children bring something they have created
Materials for craft activity
duplicated patterns of flowers and animals
bright blue A4 card & green paper
colored eggshells in zipper plastic bags
cotton wool balls
glue sticks, glue & scissors
Memory Verse
God created the heaven and the earth. – Genesis 1: 1

Lesson Outline
1. God’s Creation
2. Our Creations
3. Craft Activity – God’s Beautiful world
4. Review aims of lesson
5. Prayer

1) God’s creation
* Ask children if they remember what God made each day. Show pictures.
1) God made light out of darkness. He called the light day and the darkness night.
2) God made the sky and put clouds there.
3) God made sea and land. Grass, flowers and trees grew on the land.
4) God made the sun to shine in the day and the moon and stars to shine at night.
5) God made fish to live in the seas and birds to fly in the air
6) God made animals. Then he made the first man, Adam
7) God rested on the seventh day, because he had worked so hard to create everything.

*Show beautiful photos of creation. Look at the colours and shapes. What is beautiful about each picture? Which do you like best? God made all of this. How long do you think it took God to
make the sun, the ocean, a forest of trees, a dolphin, mountains, or even a single flower ? How long would it take you to make a flower out of coloured paper. Each thing God made took hours and days of hard work. He worked day and night to make each creation just the way He wanted.

He put all of His heart and love into each thing, to make it the most beautiful it could be.

2) Our Creations
* What things have you made? Pictures, models, cards? Show everyone something you made.
Explain how you made it. How long did it take to make? Did it take a lot of work? What do you like about it? Did it turn out the way you wanted?

* When God created the world He first had a picture in His mind, then he made plan how to make it. He got all the materials together. The He made it. Then he got more ideas and wanted to make it better. That’s how we are. That’s how we create. 
* Now you can make your own picture of creation and imagine how it was for God.

3) Craft Activity
Before Class
Paint some eggshells yellow and others blue inside and out. Bring them to class in a zipper plastic bag so the children can enjoy crushing them into tiny bits.

What to do
1. Hand out blue card and green paper to each child. Cut strips of green paper and paste one along the bottom of the blue card to make grass.
2. Children gently smash the bags containing the colored shells to form small pieces.
3. Place glue in the upper corner of each child’s blue card in the shape of a sun.
4. Show the children how to sprinkle yellow eggshell over the glue. Pinching the shell between the thumb and index finger works well.
5. Glue a river or lake shape on the green paper. Encourage the children to be creative and have you place the glue for the river or lake wherever they wish. Let each child sprinkle blue eggshell pieces to form a river or lake. 
6. Place glue in the sky. Let each child place cotton wool ball clouds on the glue. ~
7. Give each child pictures of flowers and animals to color and cut apart. Let them select the ones they would like to have in their creation and glue them on their picture.
8. Let each child cut out the memory verse and glue it on the back of the card. They can use it later as a test to see if they remember it.

4) Review aims of lesson
* to appreciate the beauty of God’s creation
* to learn that God invested all of his heart in creating

5) Prayer
* Say a prayer to thank God for creating such a beautiful world and putting all of His heart into each thing.