Children's Activities on the Shunammite Woman
- Children can be like the Shunammite woman by following the qualities that she possessed: contentment, compassion and persistence. Have children write down each quality and then, next to those qualities, write down ideas that they can commit to doing on a daily basis. For example, next to contentment, children can write down examples of what they are happy about right now. This can be a group project for younger children or can be an individual activity for older children.
- The Ministry to Children website suggests doing a memory verse with the children; 1 John 3:18 is ideal for an activity on the Shunammite woman. The verse reads, "Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with action and in truth." You could then play a game of charades using the memory verse. Pieces of paper can be filled with different kinds of activities. The children can help decide different activities. Each student can draw out a piece of paper and act out what is on the paper. For example, one slip of paper may have "feed the dog" written on it. The child can act this out, and the others can guess what is written on the paper.
- Write down a series of instructions on a piece of paper with the first instruction stating, "Carefully read all of the parts of the activity before doing anything." Write other instructions such as "Write the date on the top of this paper" and "write your name on the bottom right-hand corner." The last instruction should say something along the lines of "Do not write anything on this piece of paper; simply read it and sit quietly until the lesson is over." The point of this activity is to get children to listen to instructions. The first step clearly says to read ALL parts of the activity before doing anything, so if the children read through all the steps, they will see that they do not have to do anything. Then emphasize that the Lord sometimes calls us to do things that we do not understand until we have been through it (or sometimes even later on down the road). And just as the Shunammite woman obeyed God's instruction, so should everyone.
- The Edible Teacher website suggests bringing a beach ball to class to have the children bounce it back and forth between each other. Each time the ball bounces, have the children say, "Kindness bounces back." Then talk about the story of the Shunammite woman and how there are many different types of kindnesses in the stories about the Shunammite woman.