sunday school materials--trying not to reinvent the wheel

[bettyandbob]

My son's Sunday School class is memorizing the order the books of the New Testament. It's a 3rd - 4th grade combination class. Ds has down syndrome and there's another boy with an intellectual disability. I said I develop some alternative activities they can do that will help them learn the order.

 

I plan to work with 4 books at a time. I thought I'd put the names on cards and have the boys put them in order. My ds has apraxia, so there's no way he'll every orally recite the names. Has anyone seen an activity like this that has already been published. Does anyone have other ideas.

 

TIA

[MeaganS]

We're LDS and our church has a website for music. We use this song to learn the books of the New Testament, and there should be nothing objectionable to any other Christian religion in the lyrics (pretty much just listing the books in the NT). The link includes the sheet music and the music with and without the words. I learned it to this song and it took me about an hour to have it down. :)

Edited November 1, 2011 by MeaganS

[Mommyfaithe]

I agree about using music. We used Wee Sing Bible Songs to memorize the books of the old and new testaments. We are now using Lyrical Life Science for our science program and my kids are loving it.

 

Hth,

Faithe

[Jann in TX]

We put them in a song and then I print them out on index cards -- then have the kids put them in order.

 

You can divide them into 3 groups of 9... and color code each group. He can put one group together at a time... then eventually move to 2 groups and finally the whole thing (in one color).

 

The next step after this is helping him learn to use a Bible!

[ScoutTN]

One thing that can help when you need to teach visually is to use different colors and shapes to help them remember. When teaching memory verses to young readers, I make each word or phrase a diiferent shape (cut out of cardstock). I also use glitter or a metalic paint marker to highlight the first letter. We also made the put the cards in order game into a large motor game by making the kids use a large room to do it and by making each section of the Scripture (pentateuch, historical books, wisdom literature etc.) into a "station" in a different part of the room.

 

Walk through the Bible used to have a great overview OT and TN books. A coloring book and flash cards and a large visual. For each book there was a picture, a key word and a theme sentence.

 

Maybe all stuff you've already done or thought of...

 

we use the Wee Sing songs too. Add motions!

[Chris in VA]

Our Godly Play materials in our SS are really neat--They have a shelf with little wooden books on a small shelf that is the Bible Shelf. You could make one with 66 blocks and some glue/colored paper. The tactile manipulative may help memory.

Here's a picture of what the material looks like--again, you could easily make your own.

[Ellie]

I haven't seen anything published that I'm happy with. :glare:

 

I wrote the names on sentence cards--you know, like flash cards, but long enough for sentences--and used a pocked wall chart; the kids had to put the cards in order--no reciting them.

 

I printed each category with a different color marker.

 

These are the Old Testament categories:

Books of the Law

Books of History

Books of Poetry

Major Prophets

Minor Prophets

 

These are the New Testament categories:

Books of History (the Gospels plus the book of Acts)

Pauline Epistles (yes, I taught the dc to say it that way :))

General Epistles

Prophesy

 

I taught the categories instead a cute song for Genesis to Malachi and Matthew to Revelation, because I didn't want them to have to sing the whole song just to figure out where to find Philemon. :)

 

So we practiced putting the cards in order in the chart pockets, with the categories in random order. When they knew those, then we started working on Genesis to Malachi and Matthew to Revelation, but we continued talking about the categories.

 

We also had lots of drill about which category came before or after, OT or NT, which book came before or after.

 

And I gave them an incentive:

 

When they could say (or put the cards in order) the OT categories in random order, they got a bronze star (little plastic pin); ditto for the NT categories (so they'd have two bronze stars). When they could say

Genesis to Malachi, they got a silver star; ditto for NT (two silver stars). When they could say Genesis to Revelation, and do both OT and NT categories in random order, they got ONE gold star. It was pretty awesome.:D