Our next lesson for Wednesday’s Around the World is about Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego.  Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego was taken captive, along with Daniel, when Nebuchadnezzar II was king.  Nebuchadnezzar wanted to train these young men to serve in his palace.  The king tried to change these young men in several different ways.  He first changed their names.  They all had Hebrew names and the king changed them.  Then, he invited them to live in the palace, eat his food and learn the language of the king.  The king wanted to reshape their minds and way of thinking so they would become loyal followers of him.

While their names did change, they refused to eat the king’s food.  They didn’t want to defile themselves of all the food that the king was served.  While they didn’t change the way they believed, they did grow strong and were placed in service under Nebuchadnezzar.  While serving under the king, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego, the king told them they had to bow down to a huge gold image that he had built.  But by being faithful servants of God, they refused.  This upset the king so much that he had Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego thrown in a furnace and heated up so hot that it killed anyone who went near it.  However, despite it being so hot that not one hair was singed on any of their bodies!  Nebuchadnezzar looked into the furnace and couldn’t believe what he saw!  The guys were not burned or harmed in any way!  He also noticed that there was another person in the furnace with them!  It was God!  God protected his faithful followers!  Nebuchadnezzar couldn’t believe it and said this:

Daniel 3:28

28 Nebuchadnezzar answered and said, “Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants, who trusted in him, and set aside the king’s command, and yielded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any god except their own God.

After seeing this amazing miracle, Nebuchadnezzar declared that anyone who spoke against God, would die.

The activity for this lesson is a really neat one.  You are to attempt to burn different types of material.  This is definitely an activity that needs adult supervision.  My kids were really excited that they were going to get to burn things! 😉

Items we used to burn.

Items we used to burn.

The material you need for this activity is a candle, metal tongs and several small items to burn.  We used a piece of chalk, polyester, plastic, strawberry top, piece of cloth, a paper clip, pine needles, plastic clip and a little of Samuel’s hair.  We also had a bowl of water to put out the items that caught fire.

Claire burning a strawberry top.

Claire burning a strawberry top.

We lit the candle and each child took turns choosing an item to see what would burn and what didn’t catch fire.

Samuel burning his hair.

Samuel burning his hair.

Once the kids saw how easy it was for the cloth and hair to burn, we talked about the miracle that happened with Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego.  How not even one hair on their body or even their clothes did not have any burn marks on them at all.   God had saved them from the fiery furnace!  It was a great lesson to show that if you are faithful to God, He will take care of you during those trying times.

What have you been studying in history and geography?  Have you done any fun activities or projects? I would love for you to share with us any history or geography lesson, project or activity that you have done in the last couple of weeks.  Just link up below!