Creation according to a two year old

One of the remarkable things about taking more initiative to teach my children the Bible has been the way God has renewed my sense of awe in the truth of His Word. We have been working through the creation story from Genesis 1 over the last week or two and I have been a bit surprised at how my faith in God's ability to do such a miraculous work has blossomed! I am not a die-hard literal creationist, but I believe God is the source of life, He is all-powerful, eternal, and His revelation to us is authoritative. Here's the thing---if God is all these things and Genesis says that God spoke His creation into existence, how long does that have to take? The bottom line is that as a Christian, I have to believe that God could accomplish creation any way He wanted to and we don't have to fuss about whether a day is 24 hours or an age....blah, blah, blah.

And one thing is for certain--it is A LOT easier to teach the creation story to a young child as it is written than to try to over-rationalize it! Remember, the creation story was originally passed down orally as a STORY. Stories that are easy to remember follow a pattern and even a young child can follow the plot and main action points.

I am not naturally a musical person, but I made up a song to teach the Big idea of creation to my two-year-old. Here are the words:

In the very beginning, God made the world.
After six days, His work was done
and He said it was very good.

I am currently working up the nerve to embarrass myself by singing the song on a video. Several times, I have heard Sawyer singing the song to himself as he plays. Of course, he gets to the He said part and switches to "Zacchaeus....you come down." but I think the words are getting lodged into his brain synapses. Here's what I like about the song:

1. Credits God as the creator of our world
2. Affirms God's eternal nature
3. References God's pattern of work and rest
4. Reminds us that God's creation---especially humanity--is VERY good according to God Himself!

So even though we have gone over the details of what God did on each day of creation, I don't care if Sawyer remembers that just yet. Two-year-olds don't really have a sense of time anyway so I am choosing to focus on the main ideas of the story and use details of the story as conversation points as we go through daily life. For example: "look Sawyer, flowers....do you know who made the flowers? God made the flowers! Aren't they beautiful? God made our world and He made us! He calls us very good!

As we have started this type of conversation on our walks, I have noticed that Sawyer points out things we have talked about before and excitedly reports that God made them. We used to only notice the big trucks so this is a nice break in our monotonous routine!

I am working on writing up a lesson plan detailing some of the activities we have done related to the creation story. I will post it when it is finished.