It’s easy to create Kids’ Bible Lessons when you use these 8 building blocks!
Maybe you are a teacher by profession in a Christian school. Maybe you just signed up to lead an after-school Bible club or a Wednesday night children’s program at your church. Or, maybe you failed to attend the last church business meeting and were unanimously voted in to be the new 3rd and 4rth grade Sunday School teacher. 🙂
Whether you feel super comfortable in front of kids or are hoping you don’t pass out during the first lesson, these 8 Building Blocks of an Amazing Bible Lesson will help you confidently plan your lessons.
Here’s how it works:
1. Estimate the amount of time you have to fill for your Bible lesson.
2. Choose the building blocks that will best fit your lesson, paying attention to approximately how much time each building block will take.
3. Fill the Lesson Building Blocks with activities you know your kids will love.
And, the planning is done!
Download the Printable Building Blocks Page for Easy Reference
Download the Lesson Planning Page
You don’t have to use all of the building blocks in any one lesson. In fact, you may choose to never use one or more building blocks if they don’t make sense for your lesson time.
You can also choose to use the building blocks in any order – or even switch up the order for different lessons. You are totally in control here.
Here is a breakdown of the 8 Lesson Building Blocks:
Drop Off Activities
In a church or club setting, your lesson may begin with a time when parents are dropping children off. During this time, you want students to feel welcomed into the lesson, but you also need to get them quickly into the room and have something for them to be able to work on quietly while you are welcoming additional students into the room, getting visiting children registered, etc.
The Drop Off Activity should be an independent activity that will cover the first 5 to 10 minutes before class starts and the first 5 minutes after class starts. Wooden blocks, coloring pages, playdough, colorful beads on black felt, and activity pages for older kids are all examples of Drop Off Activities
Bible Memory Verse Activities
The Bible Memory Verse Activity should take 10 to 15 minutes. During this time, you will help kids memorize a Bible verse in a way that is fun and engaging.
Some examples of Bible Memory Verse Activities are throwing a ball while saying the verse, writing the verse on a board and then erasing words two at a time as your class repeats the verse, or making a giant mural with the Bible verse written on it for your students to color.
Snack Time
Snack time usually takes about 10 minutes if you are serving a simple snack and drink in the classroom. Use this time to talk to your kids about the lesson, ask them review questions from last week’s lesson, help them apply the lesson to their lives, or to just chat about how their last week went and what they are excited about in the coming week or ask for prayer requests. Snack time is a great time to relax and be a little less structured.
Sit Down Bible Lessons
Use this time to teach your students a lesson from the Bible. You might have a curriculum that your church or school has provided or you might read to your students from a Bible storybook or directly from the Bible if your students are older.
If you are reading the lesson, make sure and look up frequently and engage with your students through questions and eye contact. If you spend too much time with your head in a book or hidden behind your notes, your kids will tune out or start acting up.
You can make lesson time more interactive by asking your students frequent questions to see if they are truly understanding the material. I find it helpful to also remind the students that a fun review game is coming and they need to pay attention if they want to win.
Visual aids really help with Bible lessons – whether that is colorful pictures provided in your Bible curriculum, illustrations that you draw on the board, or flannel graph. Bible stories on video or puppets can also help make the sit down Bible lessons more fun.
For many students, 10 to 15 minutes is usually a pretty good length for sit down Bible lessons. Beyond that, kids tend to start to getting fidgety.
Lesson Review Games
When the Bible lesson is over, play an active review game to help your kids remember what they have learned in the Bible lesson.
Prior to the lesson make a list of questions that pertain to the Bible lesson you are going to teach. Divide your students into teams and ask the different teams questions. Give the teams points for questions answered correctly.
There are tons of ways to make this fun and interactive. Make sure that your questions are age appropriate (not too easy and not too hard) and that the games are fun but not too competitive. Ask questions to your students in teams if they get nervous being called out individually, but also make sure that everyone who wants to participate gets a chance to do so. Consider ways to make these games active, especially if your students have been sitting for 10 minutes or more.
The Lesson Review Games usually take 10 to 15 minutes to play.
Activity Pages
A quiet activity page that kids can work on independently will help to break up your class time and help your kids calm down after a game. These activity pages usually take 5 to 10 minutes.
May curriculums come with activity pages that you can copy and hand out. Activity pages include coloring or simple dot-to-dot activities for younger kids or complex mazes, crossword puzzles or word searches for older kids.
If your curriculum does not come with activity pages, you can often find individual activity pages for free online or purchase sets of activity pages for the stories that you are teaching. You can also make your own activity pages, though this can be very time consuming.
Bible Crafts
Kids love to make crafts and take them home to show their parents. Craft time is a great way to encourage your students to work quietly and independently while still interacting with you and their friends.
Many curriculums come with craft suggestions that go with the lessons. If yours doesn’t, try looking for Bible crafts on Kids Bible Teacher.com or on Pinterest. The crafts my students love the most are crafts that can be played with or gifted when they are done – for example, something pretty they can make for Mom on Mother’s Day or a spinning craft they can make and play with.
Depending on the age of your students and the complexity of the craft, crafts usually take 10 to 15 minutes to complete. (But only about 3 minutes from coloring to eating-the-crayon time if you’ve got 2 year-olds coloring pictures. Just warning you.)
End of Lesson Games
End of lesson games are a life saver! These are game ideas that you always have on hand for when the sermon unexpectedly lasts longer than your lesson. These games are not related to your Bible lesson, but can be played at any time to keep your students having fun until the very end of the lesson.
I always have a few balls and masking tape on hand for last minute games. Use the masking tape to mark “start” lines on the floor and have your students pass the balls back and forth, try to make baskets in an empty trash basket, or play “Hot Potato”.
Getting Started:
As you put your own blocks together, estimate how much time each activity / game will take. If your have an hour long lesson, make sure that you have at least an hour’s worth of lesson /activities / crafts / games planned. You don’t ever want your students to get bored, because they will find things to do on their own – and that’s usually where things start going downhill. It’s always best to have too much planned and not enough time to get to it.
Once you get comfortable using the building blocks, you can repeat games that worked well, look for new Bible verse activities, and rearrange the order of the lesson until you find a rhythm that works well for you and your students. You will find that your prep time gets faster and faster while your confidence grows.
You’ve got this, Bible teacher!
Download the Printable Building Blocks Page for Easy Reference
Download the Lesson Planning Page
Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions. I would love to hear from you. You can scroll down to comment.
May God bless you!
