Directions:

1. Pass out an egg to each child.

2. Instruct everyone to decorate the outside of their egg. *Note, you can really have fun with this.

3. Once everyone is finished decorating, walk them over to the obstacle course and let them take turns going through the obstacle course carrying the egg on a spoon and being very gentle.

Relation to Gentleness: When we allow God into our lives He carries us when we need him the same way we carried our eggs. How much attention did we have to give our eggs so they didn't fall and break. God gives us that much attention every day! He also allows us to be gentle with others the same way we were with our eggs.

Discussion point: God’s Spirit softens our hearts with His love, helping us be kind and gentle.

In this lesson, kids will change solids to liquids to learn about the importance of allowing God to shape a gentle attitude in their heart.

Directions:

• Cut two squares of tin foil approximately 10 cm wide. Fold the edges up on all sides, pinching the corners to make two small square dishes.

• Put some chocolate into one foil dish; put the salt into the other dish.

• As the adult supervising the experiment, you need to adjust the lamp until it is about 2 cm above the boxes. Turn the lamp on.

• While you are watching and waiting, tell a story about gentleness or review a story from the Bible stories section of this lesson. After five minutes, turn the lamp off and put it aside so no one will accidentally get burned.

• Use the stir stick to see if there have been any changes in the substances. As you stir the chocolate, mould it into a heart shape. Try to do the same with the salt.

• Tell your children that after it has cooled, they can taste your experiment. As the substances cool, read Zechariah 7:11-12, Hebrews 3:7-10 and Luke 6:45 (see below).

• Prior to sampling the substances, explain to your children that when we refuse to allow God to soften our hearts and put His love in them, we are like the salt that was not changed by God’s Holy Spirit (represented by the lamp). But when we listen to God’s directions in the Bible and allow Him to put His love in our hearts, we are like the chocolate. God softens our hearts with His love, and we are kind and gentle with our words and actions.

• Sample the substances, then pray, asking God to send His Holy Spirit to put His love in your hearts and to help you to speak with words that are sweet like the chocolate.

Zechariah 7:11-12 “But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and stopped up their ears. They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or to the words that the Lord Almighty had sent by His Spirit through the earlier prophets. So the Lord Almighty was very angry.”

Hebrews 3:7-10 “So, as the Holy Spirit says: ‘Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the desert, where your fathers tested and tried Me and for forty years saw what I did. That is why I was angry with that generation, and I said, “Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known My ways.” ’ ”

Luke 6:45 “The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.”

Directions:

1. Print out the Gentle Answer Printable, cut around the tag with scissors and glue to the container.

2. First let’s talk about the difference between harsh and gentle words. Pull out a baking sheet and invite your kids to drop the rocks (harsh words) on the baking tray and then have them drop the pom poms (gentle words) on the baking tray. Ask them what type of words they like to be spoken to them—harsh or gentle?

3. Show your kids the gentle words jar. Tell them that over the next week it’s their mission to fill up the jar with gentle words and actions (aka pom poms). Everytime someone in your family shows gentleness in the things they say or do put a pom pom in the jar. Watch your jar fill up over the week!

Directions:

1. Give each child a noodle and a handful of buttons.

2. Have them practice being gentle by putting the buttons on the noodles. See how many they can get without breaking the noodle.

Directions:

1. Cut a piece of sandpaper for each student. Have them rub the paper on their arm and talk about how it feels. Clearly, it doesn't feel good. Do they want people to come up and rub their arm with that? No!

2. Explain how our wrath is like that sandpaper. When we speak in an angry tone and use angry words, they feel like that sandpaper. No one wants to be treated that way.

3. Then rub their arms with a cottonball. Talk about how it feels. It feels much nicer.

4. Explain how the soft cottonball is like our soft words. When we are gentle and kind to someone it feels good to them.

5. Explain that this verse tells us that when someone "rubs our arm with sandpaper" we can "rub their arm with cottonballs", meaning that we can use soft words to turn away their wrath.

6. End by gluing the cotton balls on to the sand paper, which takes a "soft word" and "turns away wrath".