This Object Lesson - Jesus in the Driver's Seat - uses your vehicle in the church parking lot in a fun, entertaining and Biblically profound way that grabs kids’ attention and gets them thinking about Jesus as their Lord.
Click the image to watch. Runtime: 4:11
Best for kids not old enough to drive
Description: The main thrust of this object lesson is choosing to make Jesus the Lord of one’s life. To begin this lesson, walk the kids out of the classroom, into the parking lot and use your parked vehicle as the object.
Open the hood and all the doors to you vehicle, fill the seats with kids with overflow standing outside watching you. Your job is to point to various parts of the vehicle and ask the kids to tell you how each part contributes to the safe and successful operation of your vehicle.
Now to ‘drive’ the point of the lesson home, tell your kids that wise people want the very best driver to be at the wheel. When it comes to living our best lives, Jesus is the best driver. He knows the best road to take to bring us safely to Almighty God. He keeps us in the center of the road, He protects us from crazy drivers, He's never lost or late, and He never runs out of gas!
Discussion: The discussion happens at your vehicle, as described above.
Activity Page: Lobster Fold-In. Back in the classroom, hand out copies of the activity page. By folding the page along the designated lines, the true message is revealed: “Hand the wheel of your life over to the Lord!”
Extra Fun: If you have a Windows PC hooked up to a classroom screen, or a Windows laptop for all to view, download and install a simple car race game we’ve coded, called At The Races. To play, kids form two racing teams, the Silver and the Purple. Each team has a cartoon race car. A race takes only a few seconds so run several races; the team that wins the most races is the overall champ.
Link to the downloadable lesson plan PDF file is HERE.
The final page of the PDF lesson plan features ideas for quick object lessons you could build based on various parts of your vehicle. As noted in the video, this list is little more than notes to myself. That means some likely won't make a lot of sense to anyone but myself. However, a number of them may be useful to you.
A super fun Watchable is available, called At the Races. This is a Windows PC game that is displayed and controlled by the teacher. The kids form two teams to watch their team cars drag race down a desert road.
The controls are very simple, any teacher can run the game no problem. The game is controlled by a couple of keys on the keyboard (no mouse needed) and the race runs automatically--the winning car is anybody's guess.
Link to At the Races is HERE.
How to install Watchables: Because the Watchables are coded in gaming software that kicks out each Watchable as an .exe file, Windows Defender will likely show a warning. Click the "More info" notice on their window; that allows you to download anyway. Installation from there is super straightforward and only takes a few seconds. During installation, we recommend you choose "Desktop shortcut" and uncheck "Start menu shortcuts" (because these are to be used in a classroom situation, we recommend you choose to place the run icon on your desktop screen to be easy to find). The Watchables are lightweight and run on any Windows PC or laptop. Illustrated instructions HERE.