Doing the Bible With Play Dough: Jonah

I know, I know...When I first started this series, I swore I'd post a new play dough story each week, and already, I have not.  Unforeseen circumstances with my back and three sick kids sort of rewrote that story, but we're here now, so let's get started!

Materials:

Play dough - Like last time, you can buy it, or make your own.  Whichever works best for you!  We seem to have a lifetime supply of the stuff and won't be making ours anytime soon, but I'd love to know how that recipe works out for you, if you try it!

Bible - This week's story comes from Jonah.  This one is four chapters long.  Now, before you go cringing at the thought, let me assure you that these chapters are short, and this story is so fun to visualize, which makes it easy to keep their attention the whole time!

All I basically said was that God wanted Jonah to go to Ninevah but Jonah said no.

Yes, we're using the Jedi men again...this likely won't be the last you see of them!
We used the mold for Jonah and two other guys for the boat!

He gets on a ship heading in the opposite direction.  (For this, we just used any container that mildly represented a boat and put all three of our play dough men inside.)

A huge storm comes. (Here, I let my daughter rock the boat all around.)

Jonah knows that the storm is his fault.

He tells the people to throw him overboard to calm the storm.

See...nothing extravagant here...just enough to get the point across.
Their imaginations will take care of the rest!

The storm immediately calms.  (Depending on your child's attention span, an important tidbit you can add here is that, when the storm calms, the remaining men on the boat realize how powerful God is and turn their lives to Him.)

Jonah sinks.

But a GIANT fish comes along and swallows him up.

I'm assuming Jonah's was a little more intimidating...

He stays there for 3 days.

Once he prays and tells God that he is sorry, God has the giant fish swim to shore and spit him up.

God tells Jonah to go to Ninevah and this time Jonah says yes.

The people in Ninevah hear what Jonah has to say, change their ways and ask God to forgive them.

I skipped the very last part for my daughter.  You know, the part where Jonah gets really mad that God had compassion on them.  I didn't want the first part of the story to get lost over the confusion she'd likely have with Jonah's reaction, so I just left it for when she is a little older.  

So that's it!  I think the most important thing to remember when you are doing these with your own child is to keep it simple (for the both of you):  The creations do not have to be extravagant and the story should be as short and to the point as possible.  You, of course, know your child better than I, but I find over here at this house, the shorter and to the point I am, the better she retains what I'm saying!

Oh, also...and this is a BIG one for us.  Make sure to have some fun making other creations as well!  Before our Jonah reenactment began, I let my daughter have a free-for-all with the play dough.  
Then we paused for the Jonah story and then picked back up with the free-for-all once again!

So, I hope you guys have so much fun with this one!  If you take any pictures of your Jonah story (or other play dough creations), send them my way, and I'll be sure to add them to my post!

Missed the first play dough story?  You can catch it here!