Parable of the wise and foolish Builders Sunday School lesson

I love this Sunday School lesson because there are so many ways you can teach it.  I mean one of our science lessons is a variation on how I’ve taught the parable of the Wise and Foolish Builders (earthquake activities, for those who are curious). All in all, a fun parable lesson.

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Applying the Parable of the Wise and foolish Builders

Funny story, the other day I’m driving home with Princess, and she proceeds to tell me a variation on the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Builders, and explain all about how she is going to build her life on the steady foundation of Christ, instead of her emotions, and thus will completely escape being a crazy teenager.

I told her this was a great idea, but don’t expect to completely escape the teenage craziness. Future Ticia 2020 says no comment to the end results of her plan.

Then Aunt Tara came to visit, and she spent a good 20 minutes explaining her theory again.  I wish I had recorded it for posterity because it was epic.

It also goes to show the benefits of teaching your kids from a young age.  She had understood the principles of the story.

If you build your life on a solid foundation, when the troubles and pains of life come, you will remain rock solid.

Parable of the wise and foolish Builders activity

Supplies: graham crackers, frosting, knives, plate, dixie cups

Those last few items are only if you’re doing this in a Sunday School. If you’re doing this in Sunday School, I would give each child a small dixie cup with frosting in it.

Since we had already tested houses built of blocks and LEGOS I decided to up the challenge level, and use up our leftover frosting from the boys’ birthday cake, and they were challenged to build a house using frosting and graham crackers.

Which the kids all thought was awesome!  They happily started constructing their houses, and then decided their houses needed people in them.

Or more accurately dinosaurs.  Superman recently spent his hard-earned allowance on LEGO dinosaurs and was happy to have a chance to put them in the houses.  So building your house on a firm foundation also protects you from dinosaurs.  Lesson learned.

Wise and Foolish Builders game

Another variation I did with my Sunday School class, had a pile of materials in the middle of the room.  The kids had 5 minutes to build the tallest structure on the towel they could.  At the end of 5 minutes, we would pull the towel, and if the structure stood they got a point.  It was a fun, and very loud activity because we were using empty cans, but it was a HUGE hit.

This is a popular parable, so I have lots of ideas on my Parable Pinterest board.

• Wise and Foolish Builders lesson (lesson book used here)
• Foolish and Wise Builders visual
• Building upon a rock
• Wise and foolish builders buildings

Originally published April 11, 2016, I was 3/4 of the way through creating a brand new version of this post, and then realized I’d already written this before. Sigh….