Teaching Kids about Adam and Eve using the Children's Catechism
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For today’s lesson, we covered three questions (16, 17, and 21) about Adam and Eve!
Q. 16. Who were our first parents?
A. Adam and Eve.
Q. 17. Of what were our first parents made?
A. God made the body of Adam out of the ground, and formed Eve from the body of Adam.
Q. 21. In what condition did God make Adam and Eve
A. He made them holy and happy.
This post is in a series of posts working through the Children's Catechism! For more information on how this started, be sure to read the beginning of this earlier post. My kids I'm working on this with are 7, 4, and 2.
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I like when “lessons” last a little longer than one sitting so that I make sure we are retaining the information and covering the questions a lot. Don’t read this and think you need to do all. the. things. in one morning with your kids! Give it a week and let conversations happen about the material as well.
First, we read Genesis 2:7-9, 15-23:
7 Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. 8 The Lord God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed. 9 Out of the ground the Lord God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
15 Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. 16 The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; 17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”
18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” 19 Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him. 21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. 22 The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. 23 The man said, “This is now bone of my bones, And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man.”
For our devotional time in the morning before starting our school day, we worked through the second chapter of Marty Machowski’s Long Story Short since it lined up with the topics of Adam and Eve.
I love the structure of this book, the devotions really are ten minutes and throughout the week you’ll look at the Old Testament passage a few days, a psalm, and how the story points to Christ. This week, we talked about Christ being the second Adam. If you’re looking for an easy way to implement devotions into your family life or homeschool time, this is a great choice!
We had fun talking about how unique humans are. Everything else in creation was created through God’s speaking but humans were made differently. We talked again (an illustration taken from Long Story Short) about how exciting it would be to make something out of play doh, breathe into it, and then see it come to life!
As a fun illustration for the “breath of life”, I blew up some balloons and my kids had a lot of fun!
My kids could play with balloons for days and never get bored. It is a fun (not to mention cheap and easy) boredom buster!
We also read from The Ology – Chapters 9-11 (that’s the whole section of “The ology of People”) in two different sittings.
I am always surprised at how much I like this book for kids. The illustrations used are so relevant. The author explains that your image is what you see in the mirror and so “If you smile, your image smiles right back.” These simple word explanations can help kids learn and understand the meaning of these concepts (like “image”) in a deeper way as they hear them used.
We listened to a few songs specifically talking about Adam and Eve and these catechism questions (available with a free trial of the Amazon Unlimited Membership).
From Family Devo: "Who Were Our First Parents?" and "Of What Were Our First Parents Made?".
From Ask me Whooo: "Q &A 16-18". (Note that this album uses the GCP version, which has an added question in there as #17. If you'd like to see the comparisons between the 1840 version and the GCP version, just click here.)
To finish up, we did a simple craft where we "created" faces on paper plates!
This is one of those easy activities where you can use any leftover supplies you have in your craft bin. No rules, you just need glue and anything else to make a face! We got out buttons, sequins, washi tape, googly eyes, and construction paper.
My two year old clearly enjoyed it the most so this is a real "all ages" craft!
That's all for the official content of the lesson, but I want to get a little serious for a minute too...
When we are teaching our kids theology, we want it to matter. We don’t want these to be simple questions and answers. If I say “Ya, but what does that mean?”, I want my kids to be able to have conversations that get deeper as they get older. Humans being made in the image of God is one of those topics that we need to be talking to our kids about. Often.
If all humans are made in the image of God, that means they should be treated with love and respect. There is so much hate and tragedy in our world. As our kids hear about those things, we need to be reminding them of how sinful and truly sad things like racism and murder are because of these foundational truths from this lesson.
Your job in teaching your kids should be fun, full of things like blowing up balloons and making faces on paper plates.
But you also know it is a serious job.
In God’s providence, he chose you to be their teacher. You have the daunting task of training up the next generation to love their neighbors (made in the image of God) well.
You need to be pointing your kids to their need for Jesus in loving ways as they grow to succeed. And to do that, you need to remember just how much you need Jesus too!
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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