I teach the 6 year olds now in Primary. I tend to stick really close to what is in the manual but every once in a while I make something additional so I thought I would share those lesson helps for others. Lessons are only 20 minutes and there is generally more material than we have time to cover. So I just focus on one point to really try and help them understand.

This week we are focusing on the story of Gideon and how they defeat the Midianites.

I’m going to start by telling them that the Israelites were being ruled over by the Midianites and the Midianites were taking their food. The Israelites were starving. An angel came to Gideon and told him that he would lead the Israelites against the Midianite armies. The Midianites had an army of 135,000! That is so many people! The city we live in has about that many people.

How many soldiers would you want in your army to go against 135,000?

Gideon gathered an army of 32,000. God told him that was too many! So he told Gideon to tell his army that anyone that was afraid could go home. Only 10,000 stayed. God said that was still too many.

I’ll have them use the activity page provided in the Come Follow Me manual that helps them see how God told Gideon to only keep the men that drank the water straight from the river.

We will talk about how 300 is such a small amount compared to 135,000 and how it doesn’t really make sense for an army that small to try to defeat and army so big.

I’ll invite the children to share experiences when they learned to trust the Lord even though doing so was hard.

We will read Judges 7:20.

Download the Activity Page!

I’ll give them this little activity page that I made. You can download it below:

I’ll read them Judges 7:16 and ask them to circle the correct items as they hear them.

Then we will act out how the Israelites defeated the Midianites with their “weapons”; Judges 7:19-21.

I plan to tie this back into trusting in God even when it doesn’t make much sense.

I hope this can help you teach this story to your kids.

Enjoy!