Fruit of the Spirit Activities for Preschool

During the week, I teach firsties.  On the weekend, I teach preschoolers at church during Sunday School.  I absolutely love teaching a different age at church because it keeps everything so fresh!  Plus, I just adore preschoolers.  It's just the best age.  And especially since Cooper is almost-- *gasp*-- a preschooler, I'm really beginning to appreciate this age group!

This is my 12th year or so teaching this class at church and while I love it very much, the curriculum we order is sometimes really great.

And sometimes, it's really awful.

So, over the years, I've written a few good units to fill in the gaps when I don't like what I'm given to teach.  The Fruit of the Spirit was one of the first units I wrote and it's seriously my favorite.  Take a look at one of my favorite fruit of the spirit activities for preschoolers.

The fruit of the Spirit is perfect for Sunday School, and it's perfect for character education in public school...no need to freak out about teaching these fruits in public schools!  I use these words all the time with my firsties.  They may not realize they are getting some Sunday School in first grade....but they are.  One of my favorite ways to weave in the fruits is with my group plants on their shelves.

We are just now getting to do this unit in Sunday School.  Here's a look at our fruit of the Spirit activities!

We start each Sunday School session with a Bible story about our fruit for the week.  We learn the motion to go with that fruit and sing our fruit of the spirit song.



Then, we head to the table and work on our Fruit of the Spirits book...

This Sunday, we learned about joy.  So, we read last week's page, "I have love" to review and practice our early reading skills! :)

Then, we traced the word "joy" in yellow--of course!

Then, we made our real lemon "show joy" by cutting a smile wedge slice out of it!  We used yellow craft paint to "stamp" the lemon smile on our paper.  We practiced saying the word each time we stamped the fruit.

My preschoolers always love stamping these fruits.  And I love when the fruits match their corresponding words when we stamp....the lemons smile for joy, the strawberries stamp hearts for love....

After we work on our books comes the best part...the taste test!  We each try out our fruit for the week to see if we like it.  The rule is...you must try and see and you must say and act out the fruit of the spirt for the week with each bite!  Lemons are especially fun!

And since Cooper is in my class now, you get the full show of what his taste test was....

"Joy!"  I'll just go ahead and add here that he refused to put his fingers on his cheeks to say joy because he didn't want to get his face sticky.  He is SO my child...
But they just light up saying, "joy" each time they licked the lemon!  So fun to watch!

After our stamp and snack time, we practice our Bible verse and then match our fruits.  Since we are only finished with two fruits, we are just matching our word cards this way for now.  Halfway through the unit, we will switch over to matching the entire verse, "But the fruit of the spirit is...." with the Bible verse cards.  It's amazing how fast they learn to "read" these fruits!  After we match, we point and chant our fruit of the spirit song again....repetition is the name of the game for the littles, isn't it?

I have also added some sentence frame cards for older kiddos to lead discussions on how they show these fruits or for writing about each fruit in their books. Over 50 pages of materials for this unit!  This fruit of the Spirit activities unit is always a favorite of mine and the preschoolers, but I'm especially excited to teach it with my own sweet child in class with me!

And a little video of my own kiddo (for permission reasons!) saying all of the Fruits of the Spirit with the motions!

2 comments

  1. How funny! I'm developing a fruit of the spirit lesson plan too for K-1st in my Sunday School class. I think I'll check out a few of your pieces to support.
    P.S. I feel ya about sunday school curriculum...sometimes up...sometimes down lol

    ReplyDelete
  2. How funny! I'm developing a fruit of the spirit lesson plan too for K-1st in my Sunday School class. I think I'll check out a few of your pieces to support.
    P.S. I feel ya about sunday school curriculum...sometimes up...sometimes down lol

    ReplyDelete

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