We combined the books of Ezra and Nehemiah into one week in Hightide, because they focus on pretty much a similar theme: Israel beginning to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their culture. We read excerpts that I picked out ahead of time from Ezra and discussed how the people returned and began to rebuild the temple, but were already failing in following God when Ezra himself showed up.
Then, I brought out graham crackers and icing and we “rebuilt” the temple. We talked about how this rebuilt temple was nowhere near the glory of Solomon’s temple, which we had just talked about.
Moving on to Nehemiah, we again read several verses from the chapters to summarize the story. Nehemiah’s goal was to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, so we discussed the importance of a wall to a city back then, as well as how Ezra and Nehemiah worked together to help the people follow the law.
So then we “rebuilt” the wall–using marshmallows and more icing.
The kids definitely enjoyed being creative and playing with food, and whether or not they remembered all the details, at least they knew that someone built a temple and a wall somewhere. š
Adventures in Children's Ministry 