Jeremiah lesson for kids

The kids and I have been studying our Jeremiah lesson off and on for the past two weeks in preparation for my teaching this to my Sunday School class.  That’s because I had great plans for us to get some clay and try molding it.  Then I had plans of using the playdough we made for our playdough layers of the earth model, and that play dough has disappeared.

So, I essentially taught three different versions of the Jeremiah lesson to them and then let them have fig newtons.

No seriously, it relates to the story.

Our Jeremiah lesson comes right after King Josiah lesson.

 Jeremiah lesson 1

We listened to the Adventures in Odyssey episode about Jeremiah, from the Into the Light (affiliate link) set.  We all enjoyed it, but it didn’t really concentrate on what I wanted the kids to get from Jeremiah.  The AIO episode concentrated on Jeremiah as an evangelist, but I don’t really think he was called to do that.

Instead, Jeremiah was called to warn and prepare the people of Judah, so we headed off to our second Jeremiah lesson.

This was when we had our fig newton snacks, since God compared two baskets of figs, one good and one bad.

Jeremiah lesson 2

This time we used the PictureSmart Bible (affiliate link), and I drew rough sketches for the kids as I explained what all of the pictures on their page mean.  If you haven’t used the PictureSmart Bible there are several different ways you can print the material, from dotted lines to trace, brief bits are already drawn, or the version I did of it all drawn out and you just have to color.  The kids seem to like that one best.  I like these for a great overview of the book, but for some reason, it just wasn’t connecting with us this time.

At the end, they still weren’t quite clear with it, so I went to…..

 Jeremiah lesson 3

Also known as the Jeremiah lesson my kids took pictures of.  This means I have lots of pictures like this:

And an awful lot of blurry pictures and pictures I really don’t want the world to see of me.

This time, I reworded some of the material from Jeremiah lesson 2, and added in a bit of my own.

And I talked about the warnings Jeremiah gave the people of Judah.  How God gave Jeremiah some awesome visuals and stories to tell, but no one listened to him.  For years, and years turned into decades, and they saw Babylon coming.  They still didn’t believe him.

Judah was defeated three times by Babylon, each time a group was taken away.  In the first time, Daniel and his friends were taken away (it is a common tactic to take away the promising young adults to enculturate them into your culture).  Next Judah’s king, the rich, and Ezekiel were taken away (God had a special plan for Ezekiel in Babylon).  Finally, the remnants were taken, leaving a defeated and sad people.

Eventually, Jeremiah is carried off to Egypt by the scared Jews, and (depending on which Biblical scholar you read) writes Lamentations in Egypt, or returns to Jerusalem to write Lamentations.

What do we learn from Jeremiah?

Even in the worst of times, there is hope.  One of the most hopeful songs comes from the book of Lamentations (and I remember this very well because I missed this question on my Old Testament test causing me to almost fail the test, ok, it didn’t help I kept switching the names of Abraham and Moses in my short essays). This particular version reminds me of being in college because this is how we sang it at ACU, being Church of Christ everything is sung A Capella.

Get your own Jeremiah lesson

Because I taught this in a slightly different way, I’ve divided the file into two parts.  First the Jeremiah teacher lesson, with the visuals in color, made bigger, and with the teacher script.  Then with the Jeremiah lesson for the kids with a booklet I made for my kids and Sunday School class to color as I taught the lesson.

Jeremiah teacher lesson

Jeremiah student lesson

And every time I talk about this lesson Jeff starts saying, “I hear Jeremiah was a bullfrog,” and that’s all he knows of the song.  So it gets stuck in my head for the rest of the day.  I will now get it stuck in your head:

Resources used for the Jeremiah lesson

(these are affiliate links)

• Buck Denver Asks: What’s in the Bible? Volume Nine – God Speaks! (Isaiah, Jeremiah & the Prophets)
• PictureSmart Bible
•  Into the Light: (Adventures in Odyssey, Vol. 47)
• Fig newtons, because we needed an excuse to eat them for a snack just like Jeremiah did

Next up read all about The fiery furnace lesson, or see the entire Old Testament Prophets unit.