Deborah is a great Sunday School lesson to teach kids, especially girls, there’s a battle, there’s an unexpected turn, and a strong female character. The difficulty is there’s not a lot of Deborah activities for kids to do. Or at least I was drawing a blank this week.
Last we saw the Israelites had 3 great judges, Othneil, Ehud, and Shamgar.
My thoughts on Deborah
For me, Deborah continues what you see started with the first three Judges (which I’m reworking and haven’t posted yet). God using an unlikely person to save Israel. First calling Deborah as a Judge, and ending with a woman being the one to kill the enemy general.
My takeaways about Deborah:
- She was a strong leader
- She was wise, people came to her for advice and knew she gave GOOD advice
- She knew her role, she knew she wasn’t a soldier, but was willing to help
- She was humble, she didn’t try to take the credit
- She loved God, her response to the battle was to praise God
- She’s an awesome role model for my daughter
Deborah activities for kids
The weather took away a couple of the activities I had planned, so instead we acted the story out with peg dolls as our big activity.
That’s the story all put together as one cohesive unit, but here’s how it really went as we acted it out.
Deborah would sit under the palm tree (stop moving the leaves), and tell the people what God said. One day Deborah summoned Barak and told him God wanted him to lead God’s people into battle.
But Barak didn’t want to lead the army all by himself, so Deborah came with him as he gathered the army (get a bunch of guys together, NO VAMPIRES!). She warned him, he would not get credit for the final victory.
Barak gathered his army on the hill (okay put the army on the hill)
Boys: No Princess, don’t put the girl there
Princess: But she wants to be part of the army
Me: She can’t be, she’s going to be in another part of the story.
After Barak had the army all gathered on the top of the hill, Deborah told Barak God wanted them at the bottom of the hill on the plains.
“Why? Here we have the advantage and will slaughter them.” (Side note, excellent chance to talk about tactics here)
(Okay now put together the bad guy army, you can use any guys you want)
boys: Vampires! Clone troopers!
And the Israelite army came down the mountain and God brought a great rain storm turning the field to mud (put the brown cloth down on top). The Israelite army routed Sisera’s army (knock down all the bad guys).
(Okay clear the field, new scene, Princess we need that girl)
Then Sisera
Superman: No, make him be a vampire
Then Sisera demanded Jael hide him in her tent.
Batman: It looks like she’s kissing him! Ewwwwww
When Sisera was asleep Jael went in and killed him.
At the end of it all Deborah and Barak praised God for an amazing victory.
After all of that acting out we had one last activity to do:
In Judges 6 Deborah and Barak sing a praise song to God. I printed out most of the verses (I cut out the ones that would be too hard to classify, and were more narrative) and had the kids classify the verses according to: praise, confession, and request
Other materials used for our Deborah activities
- Buck Denver Asks: What’s in the Bible? Volume Four – Battle for the Promised Land
- AIO Classics #4: Bible Eyewitness: The Hall of Faith: 12 Stories of the Bible’s Greatest Heroes (Adventures in Odyssey Audio)
- Deborah lesson plan (the printable storybook I used)
To find more Judges activities, check out my Joshua, Judges, Ruth pinterest board.
For more Bible curriculum, check out my Bible curriculum page up above.
So I am embarrassed to admit that I don’t remember anything about Deborah except that she was a Judge. I guess I need to reread that part!
I find her to be rather interesting, especially since she’s the ONLY female judge, and one of the few strong women in the Bible.
I don’t remember much about Deborah either. Time to re-read!
Judges 4 and 5, I think……. or was it 3 and 4? She’s the first Judge who gets more than a few verses.
Hi Ticia, So nice to seeing you sharing about Deborah! She almost never makes the children’s Bible cut and she’s one of my favorite characters.
I know, there’s so many great lessons that rarely make it into children’s Bibles OR stories they’re taught in Sunday School, and I think that’s really a shame.
It was a great story… I will share it to the kids tom. at KIDS CLUB. 🙂 by the way my real name is also DEBORAH.. YES! sometimes it was forgotten now it’s time for me to share it. Thanks for the crafts. 🙂
Now the question is, did your parents choose to name you for Deborah, or were you named Deborah for another reason?
Absolutely loved the ‘way it really went’. I was glad I was alone when I read it cause I was laughing and smiling all the way through. I’d say that went extremely well! We had 6 learning at home much of the time, and they ALWAYS unique ideas. Plan to use some of yours for a Sunday School Lesson now. Thank you. :)t