Bible storytelling Archives - Page 2 of 2

Journey to Bethlehem – Adam and Eve disobey

Adam and Eve break God’s law

Journey to Bethlehem – Adam and Eve disobey. We are travelling to Bethlehem for Christmas starting at the very beginning…

Week one was creation – God made everything good and Adam and Eve were friends with God and each other.

The idea for the creation paper plates came from here – https://ithappensinablink.com/paper-plate-the-days-of-creation/

This week the story is all about how things went from being ‘very good’ (thumbs up) to very bad (thumbs down). The creation plates will be part of the large picture board and the next story will be added.

The story from Genesis 3

Bible truth for toddlers – Adam and Eve broke God’s one rule

‘God gave Adam and Eve one rule. ‘Don’t eat the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden’. They could eat from every other tree but not that one.

Then one day a serpent began to talk to Eve! ‘ Just look at the fruit on that lovely tree in the middle of the garden! It looks so deliciousssss. I’m sure God won’t mind if you take a bite. Nothing bad will happen!’

Eve looked at the tree. It did look lovely. Eve looked at the fruit. It did look yummy. She reached out her hand…. and she took the fruit. She could smell how delicious it was and then…… she took a bite. Then Adam took a bite too!

They had broken God’s one rule and everything changed. They weren’t friends with God anymore and they tried to hide.

But God found them. He still loved them and he promised to send a Saviour so that people could be friends with God again.’

In the storybag

Journey to Bethlehem – Adam and Eve disobey craft

Paper plate spiral snake for Journey to Bethlehem Adam and Eve disobey

Use a paper plate to make a spiral. Make sure the spiral is fairly wide. Decorate with squares of tissue paper. Add some string to the snakes head, an eye and a tongue.

Followers of Jesus – Nicodemus

Nicodemus is mentioned several times in the New Testament. He first appears in John 3, then again in John 7 and then finally in John 19. He came to be a follower of Jesus over time. Quite different to Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus but no less real.

For our Toddler Group story we’ll be thinking about the events of John 3. Nicodemus was a very important man with lots of questions. He was also wanting to see Jesus when the crowds had gone home and so he found Jesus at night.

The story

I’ll be using two ‘people’ from my storystack – www.storystack.co.uk

Jesus had done lots of amazing things. He had made sick people better, he had made blind people see again. No one else could do something like that.

Lots of people heard about the things that Jesus did and they wondered, ‘Who is Jesus?’ ‘Is he a good man?’ Yes, he is. ‘But is he sent from God?’ Some people believed that Jesus was God’s Son sent from heaven.

But some people weren’t sure what to think. One of those people was a man called Nicodemus (everyone repeat the name). Now Nicodemus was an important man who knew lots and lots of things. But he didn’t know if Jesus really was God’s Son or not.

What could he do?

One night when the stars were shining in the sky (make star shapes with your hands) and most people were at home in bed and fast asleep (pretend to be sleeping) Nicodemus crept out of his house (walk on the spot on tiptoe and everyone shush) and went to find Jesus.

‘Jesus, you are a great teacher sent from God or how else could you do the amazing things that you have done’ said Nicodemus.

Then Jesus said something that Nicodemus found hard to understand, ‘You must be born again!’ Jesus didn’t mean that we all have to become brand new babies again. He meant that when we believe in Jesus he makes us brand new inside.

It took Nicodemus a long time to understand what Jesus meant. But he thought about who Jesus was and he believed that he was God’s Son. Everyone who wants to be a follower of Jesus needs to believe that Jesus is God’s Son.

Craft Ideas – one is a collage of the night sky and the other is a silhouette of Jesus and Nicodemus.

Jacob and the ladder

Story – (I used the above pictures – found via google- as puppets)

Jacob and Esau were brothers. In fact they were twins! Esau had been born first and then Jacob. They were very different to look at. They liked doing different things. Esau loved to be outside and to go hunting. Jacob liked to stay at home.

Their dad liked Esau the best. Their mum liked Jacob the best.

There was a big problem in this family. Even though Esau and Jacob were grown ups they tried to trick each other. Jacob really wanted all the great things that were going to belong to Esau, who was born first.

One day Jacob and his mum tricked Esau and this made him very angry. Esau was so angry that Jacob decided to go far away and stay with his Uncle Laban.

He said goodbye in a big hurry and he was off. It was a long walk. A long, long walk. He was getting tired. The sun was going down and it was getting dark. There were stars in the dark sky.

‘I’ll have to sleep here where I am’, thought Jacob.

So he got a stone to put near his head and he lay down to go to sleep. It doesn’t sound very comfortable does it! But Jacob was so tired and was missing home that he went off to sleep.

And then something extraordinary happened. He had a dream about angels. He could see a ladder that started on the ground but reached up and up and up right to heaven. Walking up and down the ladder were angels.

Then God spoke to Jacob, ‘I am the LORD. I won’t leave you. I will give you this land on which you are lying.’

Then Jacob woke up.

God knew where Jacob was. God cared about Jacob. God loved Jacob.

God knows where you are. God cares about you. God loves you.

Craft – angel pictures to colour and decorate

God is holy

Exodus 3

Say hello to Moses!

Moses was looking after his sheep. What noise to sheep make? Baa!

He saw something. It looked different.

What was it?

Was it a funny looking sheep? No!

Was it a funny looking snake? No!

It was a plant that was on fire but it was still green and not burning up at all!

He went a little closer! (note – explain that the children must never go near to fire)

Then Moses heard God’s voice. ‘Moses, Moses’.

‘Here I am’, Moses said.

‘Don’t come any nearer. Where you are standing is holy.’

God was there and so an ordinary place had become extraordinary. God is holy

What does that mean? Holy means different to us. He is always great and he is always good.

Thank you God for my hands..

This last term at Toddler Group we thought about ourselves – our hands, feet, eyes, ears, nose and mouth. It is a very easy starting point for the children as they are learning about themselves as well as hearing a short story.

We started with Tabitha. We’ve done her story before but with young children repetition is good.

Tabitha came along to toddler group and bought some sewing supplies with her. We talked about what we could do with our hands – wave, shake hands and help tidy away toys.

For the craft we made coloured rice pictures. Children and adults loved this craft and it was very easy to prepare. I dyed the rice using food colouring and a spoonful of vinegar. Just put the rice in a plastic freezer bag, add food colouring and a teaspoon of vinegar and then smoosh it all around. Pour out onto a tray to dry. ( You can cover the tray in kitchen roll – you just need to then tease the rice off when it’s dry). Once it dries and you break it up with your fingers. We then made rice collages – I used black, square paper plates rather than paper as the rim of the plate kept the rice and PVA glue a bit more contained.

We have a large group so I separated the rice into small containers – two lots of each colour. Half way through the activity I was able to refresh the supplies so that everyone got a chance to choose individual colours.

Easter with toddlers

Easter with toddlers! There are some lovely Easter Garden ideas in this post and if you read to the end an Easter Story video.

A simple Easter garden is a great way to introduce young children to Easter. You can use natural materials such as soil/compost and leaves or you can make a garden like the one here. The playdough will last a couple of weeks before it dries out – so this won’t keep for ever – but then next Easter the children can make another garden.

At the end of this post there is an idea for telling the Easter story using different faces – there is a PDF for you to use too.

To make an Easter Garden like this one each child needs

Green square paper plates (affiliate link)
paper ice cream cups (affiliate link)
Green playdough
Foam self adhesive flowers
Crumbled Weetabix
Brown paper cut into squares
Glue stick
Sticker/label with the words ‘Jesus is alive!’ printed on to them -here’s PDF of a sheet to print onto labels Jesus is alive! (label)

Make a garden yourself to show to give children and adults an idea of what they are aiming for.

If you click on the links above you will be taken to where I bought the plates, ice cream tubs and flowers. You could use different plates – just make sure they are the shiny coated type so the dough won’t soak through.

To prepare the craft cut a ‘stone’ out of ice cream tub and make the dough. You will need a lot of dough!

Playdough recipe

2 Cups plain flour (cheap flour is fine)

2 Cups water

Food colouring (add this to the water)

1 Tablespoon cooking oil

1 Teaspoon cream of tartar (don’t be tempted to leave this out)

1 Cup salt

Put everything in a large saucepan and mix over a medium heat till it comes together as a dough.

Take out of the pan and kneed on a lightly floured surface for a of minutes till smooth. It will be hot!

Store in an airtight container/bag in the fridge till you need it. Let it come to room temperature before the children use it.

This amount will make 5 square plate Easter Gardens if you cover the entire plate. You could cover less of the plate as in the picture above.

Enjoy making..

Have a look at an Easter garden I made to show the children at Toddler Group during story time.

Telling the Easter Story

This idea uses faces to explain the story – angry, sad, surprised and happy. As you tell how some people were angry with Jesus show the any face and ask everyone, ‘can you look angry?’When Jesus died his friends were very sad – show the sad face and ask everyone, ‘can you look sad?’ Then something amazing happened; Jesus came alive again. His friends were surprised! Ask everyone, ‘can you look surprised?’

Jesus is still alive today! Show the happy face and ask, ‘can you look happy?’ We can be happy because Jesus is alive!

Easter with toddlers paper plate faces to tell the story — Paper plate faces to help tell the Easter Story – see below for a telling of the story.

Here are the faces as printable PDF’s if you would like to use them

Angry & Sad Face Surprised & Happy Face

or plain circles to make your own – Circles for paper plates.

Christian Resources Exhibition

The Christian Resources Exhibition is on at the Excel in East London. So this morning I took the train to go and have a look around.

I’ve come home with a few goodies and some ideas!

Now in case you aren’t able to go along I picked up some of the free books from The Go Teach stand – they are samples of Bible stories and crafts for toddlers – if you would like one then get in touch via email or in the comments. We are quite happy to post anywhere. (it’s first come first served 🙂 )

You don’t need to leave your email in the comments – wordpress have a way of letting me know that. 🙂

let me know if you would like one of these samples

Elijah fed by the ravens

In our series of Bible stories that include animals we told the very short story about Elijah being brought food by ravens.

1 Kings 17

²And the word of the Lord came to him: ³“Depart from here and turn eastward and hide yourself by the brook Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. ⁴You shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.”⁵So he went and did according to the word of the Lord. He went and lived by the brook Cherith that is east of the Jordan. ⁶And the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook. ⁷And after a while the brook dried up, because there was no rain in the land.

To put the story in context we had King Ahab and Queen Jezebel in the story bag and explained that they were a bad king and a bad queen who were horrible to people.

Elijah was also in the story bag.

At the beginning of the story thse three are introduced to the children.

Story

Elijah went to see King Ahab. He had a message for him from God. ‘King Ahab, God has said that there isn’t going to be any more rain for the next few years’.

There was going to be no more water for King Ahab or Queen Jezebel. There was going to be no more water for Elijah.

But God told Elijah what to do. Go and hide in the valley. I will send ravens to give you food. You can dink water from the stream.

Elijah did what God said. He went to the valley where the stream was.

When he woke up in the mornings the ravens came and bought him bread and meat for breakfast. (take ravens from story bag)

When it was getting near to going to bed at night the ravens came with bread and meat for tea.

God took care of Elijah. God is able to look after you too.

The ravens were made from paper plates.

Jonah and the big fish

This half term we are thinking about animal’s in the Bible. So we made a start with the story of Jonah. I had seen a tent made into the big fish on Handsonbibleteacher.blogspot.co.uk so thought I would have a go at making one – my attempt doesn’t look as neat – I think my pop up tent was a little too square – but you have to use what you have! Jonah is made from a Pringles carton – I saw that idea on Pinterest. It’s originally from this blog Preachmanswife.blogspot.co.uk

Story

Say hello to Jonah! Jonah was given a job to do. God told him to go and tell the people living in Ninevah that God loved them.

‘No, I won’t’ said jonah. ‘I don’t like the people who live in Ninevah’

so Jonah packed his bag and went the other way. He walked to the boat (make walking sounds by tapping hands on knees) and he bought a ticket and off he went.

Jonah was tired (yawn) so he went inside the boat and settled down for a sleep. (put hands on side of head as if sleeping)

Do you think God knew where Jonah was? God knows everything. He knew that Jonah was on the boat.

God sent a storm. the waves got bigger, the wind blew, the rain came down. The sailors were worried. ‘Someone has done something wrong’, they said ‘and God is angry.’

They went to wake Jonah up. ‘Wake up Jonah!’ (ask children to repeat this)

Jonah opened his eyes. ‘Oh dear’, he said ‘this is my fault. You must throw me into the sea.’

‘No!’ the sailors said.

But the storm got worse and in the end they had to throw Jonah into the sea. Splash!

The storm stopped.

Jonah sank down,down, down into the water. But God loved Jonah and he had somthing there to save him. A great big fish swam up and swallowed Jonah. He was safe. (Place Jonah inside the big fish)

Jonah knew he had done the wrong thing and he talked to God. ‘I am sorry’ he said.

Could God hear Jonah? Yes, God hears when we say sorry to him.

God sent the great big fish to the beach and it gave a big hiccup and out came Jonah. (take Jonah out of the big fish)

God said,’Jonah go and tell the people of Ninevah that I love them.’ This time Jonah did what God said.

Jesus enters Jerusalem – Palm sunday

To make these pictures I started with a roll of paper from Ikea and drew a road. The buildings and trees were added. As you tell the story you can add all the things you need. The cloaks were cut from material, the donkey has pegs for legs.

The people were copied from this book Their God is so Big by Stephanie Carmichael. It’s on offer at the moment!

Legless+Donkey

Street+Scene

Palm+leaf+scene+parts

The donkey with pegs for legs would make a good craft. help yourself to the free printables.

Emergency Bible lesson!

Do you ever have to organise a last minute Bible lesson/story for your Sunday school or Church club? Maybe someone is absent and you are the one who gets the text message ‘Can you sort out a Bible Story for club tonight?’

Well, here is an idea to help. There are a few things you will need but your group may already have them. Even better think ahead and have an Emergency Bible Story Kit all ready made up! The age group in mind is 5-11 year olds

The story is ….

Jesus calms the storm (Mark 4:35-41)

Main teaching point – Who is Jesus? The Son of God.

To tell the story you will need a parachute and a Bible.

To prepare take some time to read the Bible passage. It is a very simple story. Make a mental note of what happens when and where the action takes place and what time of day it is. These details are important and will help with telling the story.

Now with the children –

Everyone sits around an opened out parachute. Play a couple of parachute games fIrst to burn off some energy. Play one game of making waves and then stopping when a leader calls out ‘Be still’. This will come in handy when you tell the story.Then calm everyone down by finishing with making calmer and calmer ripples until eveyone is sitting still.

Now you are ready to begin. Have the children sit around the parachute and if you are the one telling the story you might want to stand and not have to work the parachute (let other leaders/heplers do that) Explain that the parachute will be Lake Galilee in the Bible Story and that at the moment it is still and calm. The sun is setting and it’s getting late. Jesus and his disciples have been very busy all day .. then continue telling the story in your own words. Remember that Jesus gets into the boat and makes himself comfortable with a pillow and goes to sleep. Then the storm starts. Get the group to use the parachute to imitate the waves as they get rough.

The disciples become more and more anxious – they wake Jesus up ‘Don’t you care?’ Then he speaks to the storm, ‘Be still’. The group need to still the parachute straight away.

Why are you so afraid, have you still no faith?’ Jesus asked. The disciple were filled with fear, ‘ Who is this that even the wind and waves obey him?’ they asked each other. (If you can, read this from your Bible)

Teaching point – How could Jesus make the storm stop? The Bible tells us that Jesus was able to make the world. (John 1:3) Nature obeys him because he is God.

Application point – If Jesus is God what does that mean for us? How should we treat Jesus? Give the children some ideas – you could write them on large pieces of paper or a white board. (for example – listen to him, follow him, obey him, find out more about him from the Bible)

Craft Idea – if you have white, blue and brown paper you could make ‘storm’ and ‘calm’ pictures. The children would need the paper, glue and scissors. Feel free to print the following pictures to give them ideas. We use Construction paper from Costco but you can get it from Amazon too. It’s always useful!

Hope this helps if you are ever ‘landed in it’ when it comes to telling a Bible Story!

Jairus’s daughter

Jairus’s daughter is a story from Luke 8: 40-56

Meet Jairus!

To tell the story I used some simple pictures. I introduced ‘Jairus’ first and asked the children to repeat his name and say hello.

The pictures I used were a selection of symbols and a photo of a house that I made from a shoe box, and one phrase. I realise that the children weren’t necessarily going to be able to read this but the adult listeners are there too! Plus is a useful prompt for the storyteller 🙂 They are all held together with string and so make one large visual aid by the end of the story.

Jairus’s daughter story idea

In our story today something very sad happens but it has a happy ending!

Jesus was very famous and lots and lots of people crowded round him to see him. But one man in the crowd really needed Jesus’ help. He needed Jesus to come to his house straightaway.

This man’s name was Jairus (can you say that?). He was very sad.

He knelt down in front of Jesus and pleaded with him, ‘please come to my house and help! Mt daughter is dying and I need you to come and see her, lay your hands on her and make her better.’

What would Jesus do? He went with Jairus to go the house.

But on the way there Jesus stopped to help someone else and things were taking too long. Jairus knew they needed to hurry but Jesus had stopped walking!

Some one came from Jairus’ house, ‘Don’t bring Jesus back with you. It’s too late. Your daughter has died.’ It was such sad news.

Jesus heard what they had said. He looked at Jairus and told him, ‘Don’t be afraid. Just believe.’

They carried on to Jairus’ home and they went inside.

Jesus held the hand of the little girl and he said to her, ‘ Little girl, arise’

What do you think happened? The little girl got up! She began to walk around.

‘Get her something to eat’, Jesus said to her family. Can you imagine how happy they felt! They were amazed at what Jesus had done.

Jesus was able to bring the little girl back to life because Jesus is God the Son.

Who’s in the story bag?

I like to use a story bag at toddler group story time. I find it holds the interest of the children and adults better than a picture. My mum is a great knitter and made some Bible characters for me.

If you are able to have a go at making some then the pattern is here. They are a good size and can be adapted by adding different clothes. A lovely reader of this blog asked about the pattern so as well as replying in the comments I thought I would share the info here too.

Happy knitting 🙂 and even happier storytelling

Journey to Bethlehem – Adam and Eve disobey craft

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To make an Easter Garden like this one each child needs

Telling the Easter Story

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Jairus’s daughter story idea

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