Eating our way through the 10 plagues

***Full disclosure: we did not think of this really really cool activity to do, but we have done this for several years and our classes have loved it. We hope your classes love it, too.***

Eating through the 10 Plagues

We have taught this lesson to several groups of children over several years and we love teaching it. The children in our first grade class are in the summer between kindergarten and first grade when this lesson rolls around, and are super excited to eat food in Bible class. The teenagers and adults we made this for were also super excited and ate all our food right up.

These pictures are from the lesson we taught to teenagers and adults. We prepared for 50 people to eat the plagues. An endeavor like this takes alot of prep work and a team behind the scenes. Above, the ladies are preparing for plague 10.

 

This is what 10 plagues for 50 people looks like laid out on two 10-foot tables. 

We gave each participant his own plate and a bottle of water, just in case. Each of my four adult helpers had small plates or cups with the plague food in it. See, in the picture of the tables above, each plague number has four little plates above it, one for each helper. As Jeremy and Mike taught the lesson, the helpers circulated through the tables and passed out the plague food. Above, Mike gamely takes a bite of the first plague - the River Nile turns to blood. It's sardines in tomato sauce, ya'll. Seriously. 

Some of our participants...

When we taught the lesson with first graders, we emphasized that the plagues showed God's mighty power and ability to control everything. When we taught the same piece of scripture for teenagers and adults, we emphasized that God was using his power and strength to show the impotence of the Egyptian gods.

This lesson is powerful, but eating through the plagues needs to be accompanied by more discussion, drawing emphasis from the text based on age appropriate needs.

Of course, please be aware of food allergies. Before we teach this lesson, we send home a list of ingredients for parent approval. We do have to make changes occasionally because of food allergies, and parents have always been gracious and appreciative of the chance to protect their children while still allowing them to participate in a fun activity.

The Edible Ten Plagues

This is one our all-time favorite lessons!!!  I wish I could give credit to the creator of it, but I heard about it from Janell who heard about it from Susie, heard about it from...  Even though it is SUPER fun (and a little gross!) we still want the kids to know that the reason we are doing it is to learn that...

 Before and after eating each plague, we say the red poster together.  I also made the ten plague numbers.  They were in the workroom, so again, I cannot give proper credit.  I taped them to a huge baking sheet.  We give each child a plate, napkin and water bottle.  We encourage them to try eating each plague, but do not force anyone to eat anything.

 I forgot to take a photo of plague one... the Nile turning to blood.  For this plague, we bought sardines in tomato sauce.  The tomato sauce looks like bloody water and the sardine represents all the dead fish. Surprisingly, half of our kids tried them and liked them!

Here is plague two... gummy frogs!  We searched high and low to find these fellows and had to go to a Spec's to get them...

 Here are our gnats... they are really mustard seeds!

 Here are our flies... chocolate chips!

 Plague five... all the livestock died.  To make them, we used half a hot dog weiner and stuck 4 pretzel sticks in each weiner.

 Boils!!! This one is a little gross... a Ritz cracker, with a dollop of Cheez Whiz and a pepperoni on top!  The odd looking one is a wadded up Fruit Roll-up to accomodate a child with a food allergy.

 Plague 7... lightning and hail.  For the HOT lightning, we ate Hot Tamale candies...

 and the hail is ice cubes.

 Plague 8 was weird to make! hahaha  These are rice krispie treats that I made.  Once the marshmallows were melted and just before I added the cereal, I added a few drops of black food coloring and stirred it in well.  Then I added the cereal and pressed it into the pan like normal.  I tried to cut them into skinny strips.  It would have been cute to add black licorice legs... but it just did not happen this time.

 Plague nine... total darkness!  This year we used an Oreo cookie for the base.  Then I put 2 small dollops of icing on top of the cookie and added candy eyes.  I bought the candy eyes at Hobby Lobby in the cake decorating section.  Some years we have also baked a batch of brownies and used white chocolate chips for the eyes.

 The last plague... death of the first born.  The plate below was what we gave to each child... french fries in the shape of a doorpost and a dollop of ketchup at the bottom.

As we talked about the plague, the kids used one fry to "paint" the doorpost to keep away the angel of death.

 This was a HUGE learning experience for our kids!  They had a LOT of fun and learned even more!

Ten Plagues Booklet

I found this booklet in the church workroom and shrunk it to be a smaller size booklet. It was a HUGE hit with the kids and parents. These photos are of the booklet that my 2 year old colored.Each page the kids did something to add to the picture. On page one, they wrote "NO!" in the speech bubble. On page 2, they colored the water red. It would have been neat to glue on sand...maybe next time! :)
Page 3 - Color the frogs.
Page 4 - Use glue stick then glue salt to the the gnats everywhere.
Page 5 - The flies wings are pre-drawn. Kids do a fingerprint in between the wings.
Page 6 - Glue cow upside down under odor marks. I used a mini notepad from the teacher store. You could also use a die-cut of a cow.
Page 7 - Boils - they were supposed to draw red dots. Jacob like green lines better! :)
Page 8 - Hail - Tear little pieces of blue paper and glue on to the be hail.
Page 9 - draw locusts. This was hard. I would draw on locusts or have a bug stamp for the kids to do.
Page 10 - color black
Page 11 - draw tear drops

PIllars of Fire/Cloud

These stick puppets are TOO cute and easy! Cut out 2 clouds from card stock per child. One one cloud, glue cotton balls to God as a pillar of clouds.
On the other cloud, glue torn red, orange and yellow tissue paper or crepe paper to be God as a Pillar of Fire.

Then tape a tongue depressor to the back of the Fire and glue the Cloud onto the back of the fire.