Reformation Day Activities

There are some FUN ideas out there for celebrating Reformation Day.  I love it when I don't have to come up with stuff from scratch and can use the creativity of others.  I found most of my ideas from 2 posts:

Mustard Seeds

Sojourn Kids (good ideas for preschool AND elementary kids here)

We spread these activities out over the course of a few days, meaning we spent literally minutes a day talking about the Reformation.  This is my preferred way of doing it as I think doing a little every day helps it sink it a little better, but sometimes I'm on a time crunch and we cram all activities on a subject into one day.  They say variety is the spice of life, right?  ;)

So the first day, we read Martin Luther Little Lights: What Should I Do? 

Beforehand I had printed out the 95 Theses and taped them into one LONG sheet.  (I'm quite certain that it's longer than Luther's original document, but it really made an impression on Isaac that the list had 95 things on it.  He asked me to read it to him, buuuutttt he soon realized, that, well, it wasn't all that interesting reading for a preschooler.  Let's be honest, it's not all that interesting for most grown ups either, at least not this one.  ;)

After reading the story and talking about it a little, I stuck a little tape across the top of the back of the list and instructed Isaac to go get his plastic hammer from his toolbox.  He had a lot of fun making sure the list was "nailed" really well to our front door.

 And then of course Silas had to have a turn.

I left it up there for a while, but was afraid the tape would leave sticky marks on the door, so took it down the next day.

The next day we were a little more crafty.  The boys used quills to write out Ephesians 2:8-9.  (Click the reference to use the little printable I made).  And by quills, I mean long feathers from a package that I bought from Hobby Lobby for $1.99.  Colorful ones.  I'm sure they look just like the ones ol' Martin used.  I took out some red paint and watered it down to almost a water-color-ish consistency to use for the ink (because "red" is the official color of Reformation Day.... hm, who knew?)  Hindsight:  Didn't need to water it down.  Should have left it the thicker consistency.

So, they took the quills to "write" out Ephesians 2:8-9.  I'll tell you a secret.  As awesome as all these planned activities are, perhaps the fact that my children can't write should have clued me into the fact that this activity might be a bust.  I thought they would really like the writing with a feather thing and they actually were really into it for at LEAST 30 seconds, but, then the little squiggles they were making were less than satisfying and they begged for paintbrushes and I obliged.  Haha!  This one might work better for kiddos that are a little older.

Post quill:

Post paintbrush:  :)

We also made a Luther Rose.  I actually didn't really know what this was, but thought the symbolism explained on Sojourn Kids was cool, so we made one.  I used the template that Sojourn Kids provided and printed it on cardstock to use as a stencil.

I cut off one "layer" at a time after I traced each piece so that all the boys had to do was glue it together as we talked about it.

Here's the explanation for each piece:

• Black cross—Jesus died for our sins on the cross
• Red heart—We have new hearts and desires by faith
• White rose—We have peace with God
• Blue Sky—We have new life that begins now
• Gold Ring—We have eternal life in heaven.

Silas wasn't interested, but Isaac was thrilled to whip out the glue stick and find out which piece came next and what it meant.  This activity turned out to be much more age appropriate for my little guy.

Love the concentration and the tongue.  :)

Proud of the finished product!

We also colored a little picture of Martin Luther while I got dinner together one night.

None of this stuff took much time to get together.  (The longest prep was cutting out the pieces for the Luther Rose).  I would definitely encourage you to take pick one of the above ideas and take a few minutes one day next week to introduce your kids to this important day in Church History!