Jesus Calms the Storm

Luke 8:25 "When he gives a command, even the wind and waves obey him!"

Yes, Jesus was that powerful.  The scripture reading of "Jesus Calms the Storm" is in Matthew 8:23-27, Mark 4:35-41, and Luke 8:22-25.  A brief summary: Jesus and his disciples were on a boat.  When Jesus was taking a nap, a fierce storm came down on the boat.  The disciples woke up Jesus because they were scared that they were going to drown.  Jesus stopped the storm and all was calm, then asked the disciples, "where is your faith?"  The disciples were amazed that Jesus could calm a storm.

Lesson 1: 

Create an ocean bottle

Supplies: clean 2 liter bottle, vegetable oil, glitter, food coloring, and funnel (optional)

To recreate the boat, I hot glued toothpicks together to fit inside the bottle.  This worked perfectly because it floats on top of the water.

Directions:
1.  Put 1 tsp of glitter (I used blue) inside the 2 liter bottle

2.  Fill half of the bottle with water

3.  Use 3 to 4 drops of blue food coloring, mix with the water

4.  Fill the rest of the bottle with vegetable oil using the funnel 

5.  Place toothpick boat inside the bottle

6.  Glue the lid on top

(I didn't fill the whole liter so we could see the boat floating in the water.)

Retell the story using the ocean bottle.

Lesson 2:

Acting out the story

We created this boat several weeks ago.  I have a feeling we will be using it a lot for our Bible stories.  It worked perfectly for this week's lesson.

After I taped the corners and sides of the cardboard box, we painted and glued on blue paper for the water.

I pretended to be Jesus first, then each little disciple took a turn.  

This is a picture of Jesus taking a nap in the boat.

Please leave a comment when you try either of these lessons or if you have other ideas for "Jesus Calms the Storm."  I would love to compare ideas!