Jesus heals a blind man

In John 9, Jesus heals a man who was born blind. (Can you imagine living your whole life with 4 senses and suddenly getting a whole new one?) While you don't need a prop to see what it's like to be blind, we did have fun making these little before-and-after masks to look through.

Because there are different degrees of blindness, we put a couple layers of colored cellophane over the eye holes so everything looked dark and foggy. (If you don't have access to that, you could probably also use plastic wrap, waxed paper or tissue paper.)

To make the eyepieces, I cut out some letter O's using our church's die cutter--then I decided that even side by side and overlapped, they'd still be too far apart for a little face, so I cut off some of the side of each "O" so the holes could be closer together. (You can see this better in the top photo.)

The eye holes (blue in the photos above) are attached to the mask with one brad, so you can flip up the blurry eyes for the "after" version. The writing on the mask faces the child.

I used an X-Acto knife to cut out the eye holes beforehand, but you could also use some sharp scissors. (Make sure to protect your work surface underneath with some thick cardboard!)

Materials needed:

• Template - Eye mask (orange in most of the photos)

• Letter O's cut using die cutter or scissors and glued together in pairs (see top photo)

• Jumbo wooden craft sticks (popsicle sticks)

• Colored cellophane, plastic wrap, waxed paper, or any semi-opaque material, cut into squares or rectangles to cover one or both eye holes

• Glue sticks, scissors, brads

Before class:

• Cut eye holes out of masks with X-Acto knife or scissors.

• Glue O's together, side by side, in pairs (see top photo).

• Take a scissor blade, pen or pencil point and puncture a hole through both the mask and eye pieces where you'll attach the brad.

Directions

• Glue cellophane over the holes in the O's until everything looks dark and blurry when you look through.

• Glue the popsicle stick to the mask on the side with the writing. (There's a space between the words for the stick.)

• Attach the eye pieces/O's to the mask with the brad. The "clean side" of the eye pieces/O's should be facing the other person when the child holds the mask to their face. The side of the mask with the writing faces the child.

Yes, this requires a lot of teacher help. But isn't that the best part of Sunday School? More chances to talk and interact with your little friends. Ask them to imagine living back in Bible times, having a friend or loved one who was hopelessly sick, then hearing about Jesus who could heal anybody of anything! HOW EXCITING that would be!