As students settle in for the lesson, start by talking with your class about how it might feel to have a lot of money.
It’s pretty common for people to imagine what their lives would be like if they suddenly had more money than they could ever spend. People often say they would take a vacation, or buy a nicer house or car, or maybe give some of the money away. Last year, a man got the surprise of his life when he won the lottery—for a second time! That must have been really exciting when he won! Let’s see what he decided to do with part of the money.
Read the following story out loud to your students:
“John Robbins, from Wilmington, first won the lottery for $2 million in May 2022. Now, he’s continuing his streak thanks to another win earlier this month for $100,000…
As for how he plans to spend his second round of lottery winnings, Robbins told NC Education Lottery that his ‘dreams’ include helping those who need it in his community. ‘My dream is to make a difference in Wilmington,’ he said. ‘I want to give back to people here who are less fortunate. I want to do something to help change that.’”
- John won over $2 million in lottery winnings! What’s the largest amount of money you’ve ever seen? (Answers may vary.)
- What would you do if you had that much money? (Allow students to fantasize and respond.)
Many lottery prizes are in the millions of dollars—so big that it’s hard to really imagine. Let’s try to see if we can get a better idea of what that’s like. Invite students to gather in the front of the classroom, then pour out a small pile of pennies onto a table or desk. Each of these is worth just a single cent. But let’s pretend that instead of being ordinary pennies, these are super coins worth $100 each! To illustrate, stack several pennies on top of each other one by one, counting out loud in increments of $100.
Now, how high do you think we would have to make this stack of super coins to have $1 million? Place the small stack of pennies on a small table or chair beneath the whiteboard. Invite students to guess how high the stack would need to become by coming up and drawing vertical lines on the whiteboard with a dry erase marker. Once several students have drawn lines to show their guesses, reveal the truth: I’m afraid that this wasn’t a fair question, because this whiteboard isn’t quite big enough. Even if each of these pennies was worth $100, it would still take 1,000,000 of them to make $1 million. The stack would be one mile high!
Once students return to their seats, continue. With that much money, it might seem like you could do just about anything you wanted. But where would you start? Everyone would want you to help them with something; how would you choose who to help first? There are so many needs out there, you just wouldn’t be able to get to them all—even with $1 million.
In today’s lesson, we’re going to learn about Someone who really does have the power to help everyone. Let’s see what He did.
