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Lesson Report - OT - Numbers 20

Today's lesson, based on the ideas in my planning post, went well. The final lesson plan was:

  • Introduce the theme of how doing things slightly differently to how we're told can have big consequences.
  • Write up on the board the following quotes:
    • From Exodus 17:5, "thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it".
    • From Numbers 20:8: "speak ye unto the rock before their eyes; and it shall give forth his water", then from  Numbers 20:11, "And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice: and the water came out abundantly".
  • Discuss how Moses carried out the instructions in Exodus 17 perfectly, and was rewarded, but in Numbers 20, he deviated from HF's instructions (by hitting the rock instead of talking to it), and was punished as a result.
  • Do the science experiment.
    • Take two cups of cold water, and two cups of warm water, and a sheet of thin plastic that covers the top of one cup. All the cups should be the same size. Disposable plastic tumblers do the trick nicely.
    • Add food colouring (e.g. blue) to the two cold cups, and a different colour (e.g. yellow) to the two warm water cups.
    • As per this YouTube video, put the plastic on one cup, invert it, put it on top of a cup on the other colour, and remove the plastic.
      • If the warm cup is on top of the cold cup, the two colours won't mix.
      • If the cold cup is on top of the warm cup, the two colours will mix.



    • Use this to illustrate how doing things slightly differently have have very different outcomes.
  • Ask the children to write in a slip of paper an example scenario where doing things slightly differently can have an unwanted or different outcome.
When we did the lesson, the children came up with some interesting ideas for the last part, which included:
  • Not following a cake recipe properly can mess it up.
  • Not looking before you cross the road can have bad consequences.
  • Not following the right steps in maths or science can give you the wrong result.
For the experiment, I intended to use the church kitchen but it was busy at the time, so we ended up doing it on the patio just outside, which worked just as well. It worked as intended, and when the colours didn't mix in one of the variations, I think it kept a few people guessing, including some of the adults. : )



Stock photo by Nils Stahl on Unsplash

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