Showing posts with label preschool. Show all posts
Showing posts with label preschool. Show all posts
I love finding time during the Easter season to do crafts with my preschool Sunday School kids!  This one is from our preschool Sunday School curriculum was new to us this year and we loved it!

We did not have Easter services at church this year because of CoVid-19, but my 7 year old and I did this craft at home anyway!

What You'll Need

The wonderful thing about this Easter Bible story craft is you can pretty much do it with things you have around the house.  You'll need...



Make Your Own

Once you have your materials ready, it's time to get started!  Print out the bible verse and tomb printables from this Easter unit.  I printed the bible verse printable on blue paper and the tomb on white cardstock.

Use a half sheet of green paper to glue to the bottom as the "grass."

Then, paint your hand yellow and put the handprint just an inch or two above the green paper so that the handprint will fit in between the "grass" and the verse.  You may need to use a smaller amount of green paper and that's totally fine!

Next, glue the tomb on top of the grass and handprint sunrise.

Last, fill the stone tomb with lima bean stones.  Use liquid glue, not a glue stick for this! :)

When it's finished, it will look something like this...

I hope you enjoy making these as much as we did!  You can find this activity and many more in my Easter Bible Story Unit from my Year 3 preschool Sunday School curriculum.

Last week, we started our brand new unit on prayer and my preschoolers are LOVING it!  When I was planning out activities for this unit, I struggled because I couldn't come up with anything super creative and hands on and fun that was developmentally appropriate for 3, 4 and 5 year olds.  I mean, when you are learning about prayer, the best activity is practicing praying, right??

So I went with two boring activities and thought, "I'll give it a shot and see!"  And guess what ya'll?? I put on my best actress face, gave it 110% and my kids are in absolute Heaven with these "plain Jane" activities! Here's a look at these two simple, meaningful prayer activities that anyone can do!

Can We Pray About It?

I joked with my husband when I planned this prayer activity that it was so plain, that I didn't even have a cute name for this activity!  Each card has a kid with a particular emotion on it.  It also has two sentences: "I am _____. Can I pray about it?"

So, of course, I named this activity, "Can I pray about it?" LOL!

But seriously...

To prep, I cut out the cards and laminated them.

At the end of our first lesson on why we pray, I got the stack of cards and held one up at a time.  This is where I really played it up.

When I held up the "grumpy" card, I said in my grumpiest voice, "My mom had to wake me up for church this morning and I didn't want to get out of bed.  I'm GRUMPY!"  I crossed my arms and sold it as best I could!

Then, in my normal voice, I asked, "Can I pray about it?"

Quickly the kids catch on and yell, "Yes!!"

I add, "Yes!  I can pray, "God, help me get rid of my grumpies so that I can feel your joy!"

Then, we literally repeat this for each of the 11 cards!  So many giggles and excitement during this activity!  The sillier I am, the more they laugh...and more importantly, are engaged!

Yes, it's a silly activity...but it is important concept for kids of ALL ages to learn:  God wants us to talk to him about EVERYTHING from our grumpies to our happiness!


Prayer Requests Board

I've always wanted to have a place to keep track of our answered prayers, but it just didn't ever seem doable with preschoolers.  I mean, most of them can't read, so what was the point?

But with this unit on PRAYER, I was determined!

To make it Pre-K friendly, I used body part cards.  I made several copies of the cards so I would have enough for all those boo-boos!! :)  

After our Bible lesson, we always have prayer time...no matter what unit we are working on!! :)  We transition from our lesson to prayer time with this chant.  (This video is from several years ago...with my baby faced boy...cue the tears!)

After our chant, I typically name each person in our circle and ask them if they have a praise or prayer to share.  But during this unit, we are going over our chart first!

This was our second week.  I started by going over last week's prayer requests (in red).  I asked each person about their prayer request.  For example, "Colton, how is your thumb?  Did God answer our prayer?"  He said, "Yes!" so we moved his card from the "Prayer Needs" side to the "Answered Prayers" side.

As we moved it, I had the kids say with me, "Praise the Lord!  Our prayers are POWERFUL!" and we showed our muscles on the word powerful.

We continued this for all 5 of the prayer requests from last week...which were all answered!  Then, I continued with our normal routine of asking each kid, one at a time for a praise or prayer.  Some of our kids didn't have any thing to pray about so we said, "Praise the Lord!"

For each prayer request, I chose the appropriate body part card and put a colored dot on their boo-boo. Then I wrote their name below so I'd remember who it belonged to...because we all know they'd claim them all if I didn't remember!! :)

As I added each new prayer request, we all said together, "We will pray for you!"  

So far, my preschoolers are loving keeping track of our prayer requests!  And I have a feeling by the end of the unit, our answered prayers page will be OVERFLOWING!

You can find these plain Jane, but meaningful, activities in this prayer unit along with all of the Bible lessons, booklets, verse activities and more!
   

When I first started teaching preschool Sunday School over 15 years ago, I knew I was going to have to change some of the units that I was provided.

The curriculum our church bought was old-fashioned, the very opposite of hands-on, and many of the Bible stories they chose were just too abstract and developmentally inappropriate for 3, 4, and 5 year olds.

So almost 15 years ago, I wrote my first Bible unit on my own: God Made Me.  Our big idea in this unit is that God created all parts of our body to glorify Him!


We've definitely made some improvements to the unit over the years as I've learned tons more about teaching since then, but it's still one of my favorites!

Exploration Stations

As with all of my Bible units, we spend the first few minutes in exploration stations.  During God Made Me, one of my favorite exploration station is Mr. Potato Head!

They also can build their own silly body puzzles!

Body Parts Activities

I love incorporating hands on activities with our lessons to make what we are learning more memorable for my littles!  Here are a few examples....

When we learned about our mouths, we learned that the words of our mouth should be pleasing to God.  We used the speech bubbles and put them over our mouths and then decided whether or not they were pleasing or mean and sorted our speech bubbles!

When we learned about our feet, we learned that God's Word is a lamp unto our feet and it we need to let the Bible guide where we go.  I printed off several places from our unit and taped them around the room.  I called out each location and they had to decide whether it was a smart choice to go there or whether we should just stay home!

Craft

Most of the Bible units we do have crafts with them or a unit long craft/project.  This was a unit long project.  We build our bodies each week by adding a new body part with each lesson!

Here is the finished project!  This group was younger so we didn't add the labels.  As an extension for older kids, I have the word labels that they can glue to match the pointing lines!

You can find this unit here!

I love talking about family in Sunday School!  It's developmentally appropriate for preschoolers because it's about them and easily relatable.  Here's a look at some of the activities I use to engage preschoolers about families of the Bible.


We study 5 families from the bible and learn something about our own families from each of them.  I absolutely love the interactive charts we have for each unit.  I love that they make it easy to review what we've learned each week and are available for students to explore before Bible story time.

Exploration stations are our favorite.  And this is one of our all-time favs!  I know because we did this unit almost a year ago and my kids still try to sneak out the family house to play with it! :)


In our first lesson, we talk about people God chooses to put in our family and build our own family.

The other option is this handprint craft.  Sometimes I do one or the other.  This past year, I did both.  The cut and paste version at the beginning of the unit and the handprint at the end of the unit.  We use our handprints to show our own family tree.  Then, I write the names of people in their families in sharpie.

You can find this unit here.  Or save on the bundle here.

I'm back with another overview look at our preschool Sunday School unit on David!  In this unit we look at 4 different names to describe David.


David the Shepherd

First, we talk about David as the shepherd boy.  We have an interactive anchor chart for this unit and most of our Sunday School units that doubles as an exploration station too!  We can add the pictures to the anchor chart each week as we review our unit and then the kids can practice matching the pictures and talking about our story!

For this unit, we also have a paper graphic organizer that they add to each week as well!

David the Warrior

Week 2 is all about David and Goliath.

After our bible lesson, we sorted rocks into smooth or bumpy texture categories.  We talked about how David looked for five smooth rocks for his battle.  Then, the next week, this became an exploration station.

Then we made our own sling shot on our graphic organizer with a crumbled up paper wad! :)

David the Musician

During week 3, we learn about how David played music for King Saul.  One of our popular stations is our music station with our play guitar!

David the King

The last week we learn that David finally became king in God's perfect time.  During the unit, they have been building a castle for king David with blocks!

And we made crowns to wear!  Love this crazy crew!


I also couldn't let this unit pass by without sharing this photo. This would be Cooper's cousin...frustrated with his go fish skills! haha!!

You can find everything for this unit here!

We just finished our healing unit in preschool Sunday School.  And my littles had a BLAST learning about God's healing power!  Here's an overview of this engaging unit.

Healing Exploration Stations

For each bible unit, we have exploration stations for the first 10-15 minutes of our Sunday School class.  Kids can choose which station to go to.  (You can read more about that here.)

Our "hospital" dress up station was a HUGE hit this time and stayed crowded each Sunday!

Healing Bible Stories

After our exploration stations time, we come to our carpet circle and read our Bible story.  I use these readers available in my healing unit to read the story.  I add details during the story too, since this is set up as a "reader."  Then, this story goes in our book nook for the kids to read during stations.



The Bible stories and readers included in this healing unit are: The Blind Man, The Deaf and Mute Man, The Paralyzed Man, Jarius' Daughter and the Bleeding Woman, and Lazarus.

After Bible time, we pray while we are still in our circle.  We used this healing unit to talk about the power of laying our hands on our friends and praying for them! #socute #bestillmyteacherheart

Table Time

After prayer time, we go to our kidney table and color.  I play a song that goes along with our unit and we sing and color!  The song we used for this unit was, "Is Anything Too Hard?"  My little loved this one!

When we colored Lazarus, I even had friends who added green "stinky fume" lines! :)

Healing Games for Preschoolers

After our coloring time, we play a game or do a craft that goes with our lesson.  This doesn't always work out for every single lesson, but for our healing unit, we had a game for almost each week!

When we learned about the blind man, we played Pin the Tail on the Donkey.
 

We we learned about the friends helping the paralyzed man get to Jesus, we used our creativity to find ways to get our "paralzyed" friend to "Jesus" too!

And our favorite...we wrapped our own Lazarus people and told them to "come forth" to be healed.

When we learned about Jarius' and the woman's faith to be healed, we made a healing craft by telling what we had faith that Jesus could heal on us.  **NOTE: we used washi tape for bandaids because my regular size bandaids were too big.  The mini bandaids would work great though!**

Line Up!

At the end of Sunday School, I walk our kids to children's church.  Each week, the line leader gets to choose how we walk (like soldiers, etc...)  But during our healing unit, I choose how we walked based on our lesson.

Any guesses which week this was?

Yep, we were the blind leading the blind! LOL!

So many fun things to do with this unit to engage littles in learning about our foundational healing doctrine!  You can find the lesson plans and materials for this unit here or get 2 years of units here!
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