Lesson Plans: Loving Your Neighbor as Yourself
The older I get, the more convinced I am that much of my personality (shyness, introversion, lack of confidence) took roots in my earliest years and were formed largely by the treatment I received from my peers and my reactions to them. I think that’s why I’m so intent upon trying to help children understand how important they are – valued and loved as a child of God. I think it’s important for them to see how they help shape the world and the lives around them; that they are called by God and equipped with gifts to make a contribution in the world right now.
We hear the old mantra “kids can be so cruel” all the time as if it excuses them and us. I don’t think they intend to be cruel. I believe they’re trying to be liked by mimicking what they see in others (Erickson might say they are comparing themselves to their peers). In order to help children begin to grasp the concept of empathy, I’ve used the picture books God’s Dream and The Sneetches.
With God’s Dream, by asking the children to look at the story represented in the pictures and the expressions and body posture of the children, I’m trying to use Piaget’s stage for concrete operations. Specifically I’m attempting to guide them towards concepts inrelation to their own concrete experiences as depicted in the book’s illustrations. Thisshould help them to understand that other people have the same feelings of “industry or inferiority” (to use Erickson’ s poles) as they do. The purpose of my story is to show them Jesus’ example as the ultimate role model for loving neighbor as self.
Click below to open a pdf file of the first session of this two-session lesson plan for a broadly graded (preschool – grade 5) group of children. These two sessions were prepared by Kelly Hames, MACE, Entering Cohort Fall 2008.
Loving your Neighbor as Yourself Session 1
Lesson Plans: Loving Your Neighbor as Yourself by Storypath is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Once again, thanks for sharing these resources! And please think about publishing them at feautor.org, too, so that other people might find both the lesson plans and this blog.
This is wonderful! Looking forward to using it with my own children in preparation for using it at our church. Thanks a million!
You mention a closing poem–what is it?
I will contact the writer of this session and get that answer for you!
Thanks. A Bible story is mentioned too but nowhere can I find the passage to be read. Could you help with that also, please? Thanks!
Sure. I can see that the lesson plan refers to an attached story note sheet that I didn’t have to post! I’m trying to get that as soon as possible.
Ann Knox,
William Smith Library
Union Presbyterian Seminary
Aha! Thanks for the response. Is there a sheet missing for part 2 (sneetches) also?
Kelly said that she told the story from a variety of Bible stories. I’ve attached her storytelling sheet here which should give you an idea of how she developed her story for this session.
The poem she used can be found on the internet. I do not have copyright permission to publish it, but if you search for a poem called After the Rain by Pastor Connie Ciccone, I believe you’ll find it.
There was nothing else needed for the Sneetches session. That lesson plan is on the post after this one.
Hope this helps!