Rainbow Promise-Themed Activities:

When you become a Rainbow, you make a promise. These activities help to explain what our promise means:

Noah's Ark story - to explain about the promise. Make Promise Hand (see template) Play musical Rainbows: Put eight mats out in a circle around the room with something on each one that is a different colour. Play music, and all the Rainbows skip around the room to the music. When the music is stopped, the Rainbows run to any corner they choose. The leader then calls out an instruction to one of the colours e.g. everyone at Red must hop, and then they must do this until the next time the music stops. Sing Noah's Ark song - there are 3 on this website already.

Noah's Ark Story :

Once upon a time, a long long time ago, God made a beautiful world filled with birds, animals, plants and humans. All the people were friends together and the world was a great place to be. But after a while people forgot about God and they started to be naughty. In the end, things got so bad, that God looked at the world he had made and that it wasn't a nice place to be anymore. So he decided to do something about it. He wanted to destroy the whole thing and start again. He decided to make a great big flood that would cover up all the earth and wash away all the bad things. But then he thought that wouldn't be fair on any good people who were left, because they would be washed away too!

He looked all over the world and he did find some good people - a man called Noah and his family who lived in a very hot place near Egypt. Now, Noah's family were good people who loved God and they didn't do bad things. God explained to Noah that to get rid of all the bad things in the world, he would have to make it rain a lot and there would be a huge flood. But God also said to Noah, that if he built a huge boat and set sail on it with all his family and some of every kind of animal, God would keep them safe until the water went down.

So Noah set to work with his sons, building an enormous boat. The sun was shining and everyone laughed at him, because there was so little water in the hot place where Noah's family lived that there was nowhere at all to sail a boat. But even when Noah explained about the rain that was coming, they laughed at him, because it didn't often rain there. So Noah ignored them all and worked hard at the boat until it was all finished and ready to go. Then he got together with his family and started collecting the animals. He found two of every kind - a mummy and a daddy so they would be able to make lots more babies after the flood went away. He got animals of all shapes and sizes from the little bunnies to the great big elephants and he got food for all the animals too. He didn't take any fishes, because they would be safe in the flood, but he took birds so they could have somewhere to land when all the trees were underwater. He didn't need to take any plants because they would grow again when the water went down. Then he climbed on board the boat with his family and all the animals just as the rain started.

It rained really hard for days and days, and soon the little puddles joined up and made big lakes. The boat started to float away and the people who had laughed at Noah, had to climb onto their roofs because they were the only things that were still sticking out of the water, but they didn't laugh at him any more. Soon there weren't any more islands at all. No mountains. No trees. Nothing but water. All the world was flooded just as God had said it would be. Every now and again some of the birds on the boat would fly off into the distance, but they always came back because they couldn't find anywhere to land. But, after 40 days, a dove went out and when it finally came back, it had an olive twig in its mouth to show that it had found a tree - the floods were going down!

Soon after that, the great big boat with Noah and his family in came to rest on the top of a mountain and the floods went down more and more quickly. Everyone was able to get off the boat. They could see that all the bad things had been washed away from the Earth and they could make a brand new start. God made a rainbow so big it filled the whole sky and he made a promise to Noah that he would never ever do something so terrible to the earth again. He promised that every time it rained, he would make a rainbow in the sky to show that he was keeping his promise and there wasn't going to be another big flood.

And that is why Rainbow Guides are called after Rainbows - to show that we make a promise that we will always try to keep. But our promise isn't about rain - we promise to do our best, to love our God, and to be kind and helpful. In fact, we're promising to try and be like Noah!