Kids' Travel Guide to the Ten Commandments: Thirteen Lessons on Right and Wrong

Great ideas for object lessons, games and crafts. It's a little short on Biblical content so the teacher has to come up with the Bible story outline and make it age appropriate for kids. Otherwise, it's a good resource.

We've been using The Kids' Travel Guide to the Ten Commandments over the last 8 weeks of Children's Church at our chapel. Overall the lessons are well received by our volunteer teachers and the children. For the first several weeks we were using it for a group ages 3.5 yrs to just finished 3rd grade, and it was difficult to adjust some things for the super young kids. Pairing them up with an older kid who can read and write helped. Now that summer is over we are back to three different age groups and not using this with preschoolers. The older kids do fine with the lessons though some activities don't seem as liked as others (the reason for 4 stars, some of the activities are kind of goofy), but the beauty of it is our teachers can pick and choose the activities they know their class will like. Our Children's Church lasts about 40 minutes and there is enough material to go twice as long! It works well for us that there are suggestions for the activities to make them more age appropriate for younger or older kids in the recommended age range (Kinder-5th grade). Some of my teachers were concerned about the 7th commandment (Be True to Your Husband or Wife) and talking to children about adultery, but I think the book handled it very well, talking mostly about keeping your promises and not going into the sordid details of adultery and adult relationships. The variety of activities appeals to the kids. Some enjoy crafts, some enjoy the role playing/skits, others like the games and to be up out of their chairs moving around the room. There are a lot of neat visual activities to really get kids to understand the meaning of the lesson. For example, in the chapter about Idols the children each get a large rock and write (with help if needed) something that takes up their time on it (like video games, soccer, TV, etc). The teacher has a pitcher and each child has a cup of water. The water represents God and the pitcher an empty heart. The kids "fill" the "heart" with "God". Then each child places their rock into the pitcher displacing some of the water. You can remove the rocks at the end and show how much "God" was left after the "Idols" pushed their way into the "heart". We plan on using another Kids' Travel Guide for our next series of lessons and look forward to another fun filled 13 week adventure!

This book has 13 lessons on 'right and wrong' using the 10 Commandmenments as a basis. The activities are designed for multi-age groups of children so it is easy to use with a few or many children. Supplies needed are clearly noted in the margins. Each lesson has almost 2 hours of activits. You can use them all or choose the ones that fit you best. All the activities are hands-on and very applicable. For example, in chapter 2 they learn "You shall have no other gods before me." To experience this you write one of the 10 Commandments on 1 piece of foam and place them on a staircase. You place the 6th commandment, "Thou shalt not murder" on the 1st step and say, "If you have never killed anyone you may stand on this step." You proceed up the steps witrh the easiest to the hardest commandments to keep. By the time you reach the 5th commandment, Honor your father and your mother, most likely no one will be on that step. Is it hopeless for us??!! NO!! Romans 3:23 tells us differently. To end you place the 10 foam commandments in the shape of a cross on the floor and say "God uses his law to show us our sin. This brings us to Jesus." A very hands-on approach to teaching the commandments that children will remember for years to come.