ATTENTION ACTIVITY: Ask your students to imagine that their country is at war. They are captured and taken away by the enemy! Soon, they are turned over, as a slave, to an enemy military leader and his family. Their fate is to spend the rest of their days in a strange, hostile land as a servant to the enemy. How would they feel? How would they treat their masters? Tell your students that this is the situation faced by a young girl in the scripture story today. Ask them to look for how she responded to this situation as you study the story.
ANOTHER ATTENTION ACTIVITY: Bring a bowl of baby powder and a cotton ball for each child. Before you tell the story, let each child dip a cotton ball in the powder and put a few ‘leprosy spots’ on their arms. Explain that while we aren’t entirely sure that the disease that we call leprosy now is the same disease called leprosy in the Bible, we do know that having leprosy in biblical times was very difficult: it was contagious and made one unclean according to the Law of Moses. (After Naaman has dipped seven times in the water, let the kids rub off their ‘leprosy.’)
COMIC BOOK ACTIVITY: There is a comic book style retelling of this story in the July 1990 Friend (“Elisha and Naaman�). There are several different ways you could use this:
1. Make a copy for each student and have them read each part of it before you read from the scriptures.
2. Make a copy of it. White-out all of the numbers that introduce each paragraph. Then make a copy for each child (or pair of children). Then cut each copy along the black lines and place in an envelope. The kids can assemble the story in the correct order as a review activity.
3. For a more physical version of #2, use one copy of the story, cut into pieces, and hidden around the room. Let your students find the pieces and then arrange them in the correct order.
MAZE ACTIVITY: The July 2003 Friend (“Sharing Time: Follow Me: Scripture Maze�) has an activity about following prophets that includes Naaman’s story and could be used in a variety of ways.
DRAMATIZATION: Explain to the children that there are 4 dramatic parts to the story: the horses, the young girl, Captain Naaman and Gehazi. Each child chooses which role they would like to play. (It does not matter how many children are in each group, however you do need at least one child in each group.) Position the four groups the four corners of the room. Give cleaning tools to the children who will portray the young girl. Give play money and clothing articles to the group who will portray Gehazi. Tie ropes around the waists of the children who will portray the horses. Select one child in the group to be the driver of the horses. Have the children portraying Naaman put baby powder leprosy dots (if you did not use the activity above) or solid-colored stickers on their arms. Explain to the children that you will narrate the story. They are to listen closely and when their character is doing something in the story, you will shine a flashlight on them. They are to do the appropriate action that would go with that part of the story.
Julie, this almost makes me wish I could teach this lesson…almost! And I love that you have more than one “attention activity.” Obviously you “get” Primary.
Oh gosh do we ever need more stuff like this.
Have you ever read those Primary and Sunday School manuals? I’d recommend against it. Five minutes in, you’ll want to gouge your eyes out.
Seth R., I’m a little more sympathetic to the Primary manuals than you are. If my marching orders were to create something that would work in a branch Primary in the third world staffed by recent converts with no disposable income, I doubt I would do as well as they did.