Jesus is the New and Better Noah

Intro: What keeps you safe? Car airbags, fire alarms, staying with a grown up when you’re out? Would you feel safe in a boat you built yourself and shared with a lot of dangerous animals?

Games: We’re playing with the themes of animals and boats, as a nice intoductionto or reminder of the story

1. Captain’s Coming
   All the usual rules; Captains coming (Salute), climb the rigging, scrub the decks, port, starboard, stern, bow (run to the left, right, back, front).

2. Find the animal pairs
   Print out two copies of Animal pairs (because despite what I’ve called it they’re not in pairs) cut out each animal individually and hide them around the room. In teams or as individuals hunt for the pairs of animals, all animals must be in pairs before they are brought to ‘safety’.

Talk: How did God use Noah to rescue people and how did Jesus do that even better? Here are some talk notes to use as a basis for explaining this to Jesus. And this talk has a table, which helps to visualise the opposite roles of Adam and Jesus, and at the end it uses a picture of the ark for teenagers to easily share where their walk with Jesus currently is.

Drama: Here’s a drama about Noah and the Ark. It’s adaptable to as many children as you need it to be, there’s a narrator (N) and Noah, Shem (S), Ham (H) and Japheth (J) and then the numbered parts can be played by one kid or as many as you need. If you have a smaller group, you can double up the named parts with the numbered ones.

Activity: Here’s a quiz for older kids. For a younger audience, here’s a bunch of crafts a Noah’s Ark theme on the Pintrest.

Songs:
All through History – Nick and Becky Drake: Big Family of God
Super Saviour – Colin Buchanan: Super Saviour

Memory Verse: 1 John 5:3 In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome. You could use this as a colouring sheet or as an aide memoir. Or get the kids to come up with actions for each of the words replaced by a picture.