Science Lessons, Ideas, Activities, and Resources for Elijah, the Prophets of Baal, and the Still Small Voice

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Elijah and the Still, Small Voice 

Science Workshop

Summary of Lesson Activities:

This Movement and Games lesson seeks to highlight the relationship between silence and the ability to hear God's voice (prayer). The lesson does this by setting up a task each student must do three times: Once in a silent environment, once in a loud environment and once with one eye covered. The task provided is a maze-like contraption that, if bumped will complete a circuit and cause a buzzer to go off. Instuctions for how to build such a device are in the attached lesson plan. If you do not feel very handy, or time-constraints exist, feel free to substitue the game "Operation" for the maze-like activity, or use another activity that you can think of to have the class/students participate in. The "science" is not so much in the activity, but in the repetition of the activity with one variable changing each round and the subsequent tracking of data regarding each variable. It's helpful for the activity to be in the eye/hand category since a split focus (illustrated by a patch over one eye) is one of the three variables. 

Scripture Reference:
1 Kings 19:1-3; 9-16 

Leader Preparation:

• Read the scripture ahead of time.
• Gather the materials.

Supplies List:

• Wire mazes
• Buzzers
• Pirate Patch

Lesson Plan 

Opening-Welcome and Lesson Introduction:
Greet the children and introduce yourself. 

Open with a prayer. 

Dig-Main Content and Reflection:
From the attached lesson, here is the science activity with some of the teaching comments (written in first person) included:

Tell

• Even though Elijah could hear God before the storms, he couldn’t hear God clearly enough about what he was to do because Elijah was too worried about being killed by Queen Jezebel.
• So God reminds Elijah about focus.
• How God reminds Elijah of focus is by telling Elijah to stand outside and wait for God to speak with him there.
• Elijah can’t hear God during the storms, and that’s the whole point.
• When Elijah focuses on things that are scary, like Queen Jezebel wanting to kill him or really strong wind storms, then Elijah can’t hear God very well.
• So God reminds Elijah to be still and listen in that stillness.
• The same is true for us.
• When we pay attention to scary things, or things that worry us then we will have a harder time hearing and understanding God. 

Explain:

• We’re going to do an experiment to see how good our focus is in the silence, when loud things are going on around us and when we keep only one eye on what we’re supposed to be doing.
• We will keep track of our results using this handout sheet (NOTE: See last page of lesson plan for handout).
• There are three of these wire mazes. I will split you into even teams so that an even amount of you are at each wire maze.
• Each wire maze is attached to a buzzer which is attached to a battery. If you touch this loop to the wire maze [at this point demonstrate what that sounds like] the circuit is completed and the buzzer will go off.
• You are to successfully complete the maze from start to finish without setting off the buzzer.
• Every time the buzzer buzzes, you must wait until the buzzer stops before continuing your navigating of the maze.
• Someone who is with you will help you count how many times the buzzer buzzes. You will then record the total amount of buzzes in your chart.
• We will do this in rounds so that everyone gets a turn.
• So pick your first person in the group who will go.

Do Science Activity:

• For Round One, on “Go” that first person will go. We will all be very quiet. We will not talk.
• When the first person finishes, that group needs to raise their hand.
• I will be timing everyone. I’ll let you know what the time is after the other two teams are done too. Once I tell you, then you can write it down.
• Then, it’ll be time for the next person in your team to go.
• We’ll do that until everyone has had a turn.
• Once everyone has had one turn, we’ll now start round two.
• For Round Two, pick the first person to go.
• Then when its time to start (at go) those of us who are NOT doing the wire maze will yell and jump around and try with all our might to distract the people doing the wire maze. However, you may not TOUCH the people or the table or the wire maze. But you can jump up and down, clap your hands, whistle – all within reasonable taste. 

[NOTE: You’ll want to have a way to get everyone’s attention in case they get too loud. I’d suggest telling them that if you raise your hand, and they see it, then they are to raise their hand too, and stop talking until everyone has their hand raised and there is no talking – you might even want to practice this once or twice]

• One person in each group will have to listen for the buzzer (because it might be too loud to hear it just regularly). If the buzzer goes off, remember, the person has to wait for the buzzing to stop before continuing his/her navigation.
• Again, let me know when you’re finished so that I can tell you the time and then you can write it down.
• For Round Three, we’ll do the same thing with the wire maze, but this time, you’ll have to keep one eye or use the one-eyed pirate patch.
• Again, you are trying to not have the buzzer go off.
• Let me know when you’re done so that everyone can record their times. 

Ask:

• Looking at the times we wrote down, overall, when did we finish the wire maze the fastest? (hopefully when it was quiet and with both eyes open) 

Tell

• We focus better on what we’re doing when we’re completely focused with our eyes and ears on what we’re doing. (The one-eyed experiment was meant to simulate looking at other things, like storms, when we’re just supposed to be looking at one thing, like God)
• The same goes with listening to others and listening to God.
• When there’s silence and we sit still and don’t look at other things then we’ll be able to better hear what is being said to us.
• The Good News for Today is the reminder that when we practice listening to God, it is good for us to be in a quiet place with few to no distractions so that we can focus on what God might be saying to us.
  
  

Closing: 

End with a prayer.

For the full lesson download the attached Word document (found at the bottom of this post). Note that the first three pages of the document are background and that the actual lesson starts on page 4.

To view the other lessons in this lesson set on rotation.org click HERE for Movement & Game and HERE for Storytelling. If you like these lessons, and are interested in more, visit www.rfour.org/curriculum.html.

A lesson written for rfour.org