Bible stories, crafts and creative ideas for toddler groups, children's ministry and families
Jesus told the story about the Wise and Foolish Builders as part of his Sermon on the Mount. You can read it in Matthew 7:24 – 27. It’s a great story for using actions as you tell it. And of course there is the song. If you search youtube for ‘the Wise Man built his house on the rock’ you should find a couple of versions at least.
The craft that we made was a house on rock made from cut out shapes. The sequin rain is optional – depending on how much mess you wish to make!
We started a new set of Bible stories at Toddler group today. Each week we are going to meet someone from the Bible who followed Jesus. Today we started with Tabitha (or Dorcas) from Acts 9. She came along in our story basket together with a few sewing related items.
We begin by saying hello to Tabitha and then I talk about how she helped others because she followed Jesus. The way she helped was by making clothes. As items are taken out of the story basket they are named. The children listened really well!
The puppet is new and was from E W Education via Amazon. They come as a set of 10 different puppets in a lovely hessian sack with several accessories.
Our craft was decorating people shapes with fabric and wool.
On a slightly different note – I will be leading a seminar/workshop about craft at toddler group at the Care for the Family Playtime Conference in September. It’s going to be all about crafts for different seasons. I am chuffed to bits to have been invited. Here’s a link to the info. There are lots of seminars and great speakers. It’s going to be a really good day 🙂
Lovely crafts were made today ..
Sometimes I have cut out wreath shapes from paper plates but when you need to make 50 that can take a while! So when I found that Baker Ross were selling cardboard wreath shapes I was really keen to try them out. As you can see they are dark brown, obviously made of card and come with a hole and some string so they can be displayed at home. A big win! Here’s the link to Baker Ross with all the info about the craft wreaths.
The embellishments are from Hobbycraft (eggs and bunnies) Take the eggs out of the packaging well ahead as they really do smell! The paper hearts and circles are made with a paper punch and the confetti is the biodegradable kind. I cut the bird and ladybird from molliemakes magazine. The Easter greeting is on sugar paper and I did write happy Easter 50 times. Part way through I began to worry that I was spelling Easter incorrectly!
I will definitely be using the craft wreaths for other crafts. Really great find.
I’ve spent part of today making Easter crafts ready for the next couple of weeks of toddler group. The above is a collection of all the things we’ve done to celebrate Easter over the past six years. When I look at some of them I am amazed that I made the time to prepare 60 salt dough eggs or cut out wreath circles from paper plates! But I did and the children loved them. The chocolate nests were made at our Monday afternoon Reception to Year 2 group. This afternoon one of the children reminded me that we made them last year – I think we may make them again next week.
Salt dough eggs –Â
To make them you need to start with a salt dough. This is very easy. You need 2 cups plain flour, 1 cup of salt and 1 cup of water (add this gradually as you may not need it all). Kneed the dough on a floured surface and roll out to about 4mm thick. As you do this keep making sure it isn’t sticking to the work top. I used a template and cut around it. You could also use an egg shaped biscuit cutter. If you are making hanging decorations you need to make a hole for the thread about 1cm away from the edge. Then leave the shapes to dry. They will air dry, but it will take a long time (48 hours plus) or you can put them in a low oven, not more than 100C, for up to 4 hours. (they can burn so keep an eye on them). Once dry you can paint them or leave them plain for children to decorate.
We used felt tips to decorate but you could also glue coloured paper on to them and add glitter or use finger paints.
‘Love heart flowers cards’ – This is an easy make for Mother’s Day which is only a couple of weeks away! The flowers and leaves are made by cutting out heart shapes from coloured sugar paper. I don’t cut these out with scissors ; I use paper cutters. Paper cutters or punches can be expensive but if you use them a lot they are soon worth the money spent. It would take me for ever to cut out hearts! The other shapes are squares/rectangles for the vase and thin strips of green paper for the stalks.
Handy tip – if your paper punch begins to get blunt cut a few shapes out of aluminium foil to sharpen it.
Q is for Question is part of our Bible Alphabet series. Starting at A we have told a Bible Story for each letter of the alphabet. It can be anything – a person, place or object – so long as the letter we are doing comes somewhere. Q was a bit tricky! There are names we could have used (but not many) so we went with question.
The question, ‘who is this, that even the winds and waves obey him?’ was asked by the disciples after Jesus stilled the storm. (Mark 4:36-41).There are other questions in the story – ‘Teacher do you care that we are perishing?’ and ‘Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?
The question about who Jesus is is at the heart of the story.
Have a story bag with a boat and the twelve disciples (you could use duplo figures or cut out pictures. Below are lego mini figures because that is what we have! Don’t look too closely at the characters as they are a strange bunch!)
Piece of blue cloth to represent the sea.
Cushion or pillow
Or
Introduce actions for the children to do during the story
You could play some sound effects during the story – thunder and rain recordings are available on MP3 downloads (usually used for relaxation). Make sure you listen to anything you plan to use beforehand.
There’s a fuller version of the Story here and a craft idea too.
The story of the Wise Men is from Matthew 2:1-15. As this story is being told to toddlers I don’t mention Herod’s plan to kill the baby boys. It is a very dark part of the story and reminds us the Birth of Jesus took place in a world where many people had rejected God.
To tell the story you need – some Wise Men, toy camels and a star. You can add some actions too – stars with hands (like in twinkle, twinkle little star), running, looking, kneeling.
The story
Bible Truth for Toddlers – Jesus is King
Do you remember how we heard about Jesus being born? He was a tiny baby. But then he grew and he was a toddler – just like you! He lived in a house with Mary and Joseph.
Far away from where Jesus lived there were some Wise Men. They read books and knew lots and lots of things. They loved to look at the stars in the dark nights sky. One night they saw a new star! They looked at the new star and they looked at each other. ‘Wow! they thought, ‘this new star means that a new king has been born in Israel. Let’s go and worship him’.
So they packed their things and set off for the important city of Jerusalem. They traveled for a long time. It took days and days to get there. When they arrived in Jerusalem they asked everyone they met, ‘Where is the new baby king?’
Now, there was a king in Jerusalem called King Herod but he wasn’t a baby, he was a grown up and he wasn’t happy. He didn’t want a new King! He heard that there were men from a far away place who were asking people, ‘Where is the new king?’ This upset him and it upset the people who were living in Jerusalem. He sent for the men from the temple. ‘Where is this new King to be born?’ he asked. The men from the temple knew the answer because it was written in the Bible. ‘In Bethlehem.’ they said.
Herod sent for the Wise Men and he told them to go to Bethlehem and find this new King and then come back and tell him where the new King was so he could go and worship him too.
So off the Wise Men went. It wasn’t too far to go now. As they got nearer something very special happened. The star was there again and this time it went before them and shone right over the house where Jesus was. The Wise men had found Jesus and they knelt down and worshiped him. They took their treasures out of their bags and gave them to Jesus. They gave him gold, farnkinsense and myrrh. These were special gifts for a King.
The Wise Men never told Herod where Jesus was. God warned them not to in a dream and they travelled home.
Herod didn’t want to worship Jesus. He wanted to get rid of him. An angel told Joseph to take Mary and Jesus and run away to a different country till it was safe to go back home.
Joseph did what the angel said and took Mary and Jesus to somewhere safe far away from Herod. When the danger was past they went to back home to Nazareth.
Craft Idea –
Decorate stars – we’ve used wooden stars from amazon and paint. Put the painted star on a white envelope so you can name it. It’s much easier than writing it on the back and then having to turn the stars over at home time.
Man through the roof craft is fun! In our group for Reception – Year Two we are doing a series of Bible Stories that can be found here. This week we began with the man through the roof story (healing of the paralysed man) from Mark 2:1-12.
We made a craft using a square envelope for the house. This is my version. The picture of the man is from page 79 of the free lesson available from Teachkids.eu. The lesson is found in the Preschooler section and is called ‘Little kids can know God through his miracles’.
And these are the crafts created by the children
I hope you enjoy this lovely craft.
Lots of making today at Toddler Group – sequins and shredded tissue paper here,there and everywhere but beautiful baubles were made and a simple nativity. I think I prefer sequins instead of glitter for making baubles and the children loved them.
I love celebrating Christmas at Toddler Group 🙂
This past week our Bible Story was all about Joseph, his special coat and how his brothers sold him to people travelling on camels to Egypt. The camels were donated to the group about a year ago and normally live in our ‘Vet’ box. They come in very useful for several stories.
Craft – Joseph and his coloured coat! There is a PDF –Â Joseph
Look out for the umbrella in one of the children’s pictures 🙂
There are lots of Bible Stories about people who were shepherds – Abel, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and his brothers, Moses, David and Jesus is the Good Shepherd.
I’ll be using this colouring page as the craft for the story about Moses and the burning bush. (Exodus 3). As we do the craft before and after the lesson I haven’t included the burning bush as I want that to be a surprise in the story. Click here for the story.
You could use it for any of the Bible Stories about shepherds. Here’s the link for the PDF – Shepherd and Sheep
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
This Abraham in his tent craft has a lift the flap element that hides Abraham! It’s a lovely craft to make with lots of sticking and opportunities to add texture to the tent by using fabric and texture to the sky by using cotton wool for clouds.
Abraham (this picture was from a google image search),
Blue sugar/construction paper,
Green sugar/construction paper cut into a narrow strip,
A cloud (optional – you could use cotton wool balls that can be unrolled and split),
A tent shape (see the photo and instructions below)
Glue
Tissue paper and/or fabric squares.
To make the tent shape – use the same size paper as for the blue background and trim about an inch off the bottom. Then fold as you see in the picture below. I pre-made the basic tent shapes in different colours in advance.
Lay out your craft area to make it look welcoming. If it’s a large group don’t put out all your supplies at once but keep some for children who want to do the craft later in the session.
Our Bible Story was all about how Abraham left his home and went to a new land that God had promised to show him. This story is found in Genesis 12:1. Abraham travelled around this new land and lived in a tent. So our craft is Abraham in his tent!
‘Abraham’ came to toddler group in the Story Bag! We did lots of pointing to our ears when we heard how Abraham listened to God and lots of walking (hands on knees and making the sound of footsteps) as we heard how Abraham did what God said and went to a new place to live.
Later on we told the story about the birth of Isaac – the craft is almost the same but with more people! Take a look at this post Isaac is Born to see the craft idea.
I used a picture of Abraham from the web for the craft but have made a download of Abraham for you to use. Use the link below.
We used a wooden spoon based craft for the bible story about Jesus healing a man who had leprosy. You can read the story in Matthew 8.
The children drew a sad face one side of the spoon and a happy face the other. We used kitchen roll for the clothes – a fairly good quality brand that the children could decorate with felt pens. The arms and belt are pipe cleaners. Use a slighty longer pipe cleaner for the arms.
To make –
Draw the faces on the spoon and write name on the spoon handle
Colour/decorate the square of kitchen roll – I cut the kitchen roll squares into quarters which made them just the right size for our small wooden spoons. Once coloured fold the quarter in half and then in half again and make a small cut on the fold. Slide the spoon through this and then add the arms. Finally add the belt.
This basic idea can be used for retelling lots of Bible stories. Large wooden spoons make great puppets too. Have a look at this idea here.
Do you remember our HBC scenery?  We bought the picture for the scenery from http://www.creativeforkids.com and so we were able to use the picture of a Bible time scene in miniature to make a craft.
The base is a square paper plate. The house is a rectangle block of wood painted with emulsion. Tissue paper makes the grass/sand.
I really enjoyed putting this craft together and the children enjoyed making their own too – which is the main thing!
There was a bit of prep – cutting an ark shape from a folded paper plate and tearing tissue paper into long strips. the ark ‘floats’ on the tissue paper water. The animal stickers were a perfect size.
There are lots of versions of this in my house (!) – this is my favourite
How to make – paper plates cut in half. You can easily cut the dinosaur spikes/plates a few plates at a time. Older children who can safely use scissors can do this part themselves. 
Each dinosaur needs a tail and a head – there is a free printable here – Dinosaur Head and Tail (1)Â Colour these and then attach with glue.
Decorate the dinosaur with tissue paper, crayon, pens – whatever suits you. I like to give children a choice.
Decorate the pegs and attach. The dinosaur should stand up!
We are getting ready for a HBC – these three crafts fit our sport theme. The paper bags, trophy and flag are all from ‘the little crafty bugs company’. The template for the paper bag runner puppet (it cost $4 ) is from ‘teachers pay teachers’.
To decorate each craft we’ve got googly eyes, wool, crayons, cake cases, tissue paper, stickers, pens and crayons…
God made people – story and craft ideas for use in toddler group or at home or in Sunday School. The craft ideas are very easy to make. You could do more than one in your toddler group in the same week.
For the Story have some puppets for Adam and Eve, and some toy animals and pictures land and the sea and plants and trees to take from the story bag as you tell the story.
At the very beginning of the world God made everything. He made all the plants and animals. But who was going to look after them? God made people to care for the plants and animals.
When God made people he breathed life into them and they were perfect! He called the man he made Adam and the woman that he made Eve. They were the worlds first family.
God told them, ‘look after everything that I have made’, and everything was very good. (thumbs up). Can you remember the things God made that the people had to look after?
There was the land and the sea. There were the plants; the tall trees and the small flowers. There were the small animals and the large animals. (Have pictures and toy animals to show to the children from a story bag). God had made all these beautiful things and now Adam and Eve were to look after them.
God loved the people he had made and he loves you and me too. We are all important and special to him.
People shapes are available from Amazon – this is an affiliate link. If you click on the link and purchase the product the blog receives a very small payment at no extra cost to you. Thank you.
Here’s a link to a different version of this Bible Story
Paper plates, tissue paper, glue and a bit of preparation = animal crafts that look great and are fun to make. You can add googly eyes, wool, stickers for eyes, triangles for a nose…
Here are a couple that I’ve made –
There are loads of ideas on my paper plate pinterest boardÂ
Genesis 1: 25 ‘And God made the beasts of the earth…and everything that creeps on the ground…and God saw that it was good.’
There are so many crafts that you could make about the small animals that God made – spiders (!), paper plate ladybirds, butterflies to mane a few. i decided on a caterpillar with a butterfly. I used circles (these are card making supplies), tissue paper grass and paper antennae and added some flower shapes.
Here’s a link to Vicki Howie’s Faith in the Family blog post – it’s all about creation!
To tell the story (have the props in a story bag and take them out when you need them)
‘God made the sky. It was big and empty. So God put the sun in the sky for daytime. He put the moon in the sky for nighttime. What else can we see at night? God made all the twinkling stars. Now sometimes in the day and at night we see something else that God made in the sky – he made clouds too. Everything that God made was very good.’ (Thumbs up)
Song to sing – ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star’ (of course!), ‘My God is so big, so strong and so mighty’.
This was our craft .. cup cake cases cut into clouds (beforehand – older children could do this themselves), cotton wool clouds, shiny paper sun rays and a bit of glitter glue. The sun was cut out using a paper punch.
Some ideas for older children from Crafting the Word of God
This week at Toddler group we learnt that God made the sun, moon and stars. I put on my sunhat and sunglasses for the sun and we pretended to be asleep when we thought about the moon and stars. God made these things just by speaking and they were very good! (we all do thumbs up).
Our craft was making a paper plate sun and a paper plate moon surrounded by stars. We used pre-cut card stars (charity shop find) and pasta shapes, silver and yellow tissue paper and PVA glue. The moon and stars were glued onto black card. The chidren and parents are free to use the craft materials as they like so we have some suns covered in stars 🙂 It’s all about the fun of making rather than the end product.
Our songs were all part of the theme too. These laminated posters are displayed during the session to advertise our song and story time!
a pre-school teaching resource to win!
This term we’ll be using Scripture Union’s Tiddlywinks ‘The Big Green Book’ each week at toddlers.
We will adapt the different ideas each week to suit our group. We are starting with ‘God’s Wonderful World’. It’s all about water. So here’s my craft idea – with a PDF for you and my collection of wet weather gear that I’m planning on dressing up in.
PDF –Â Umbrella & Rain
This craft is suitable for all ages – you may have to vary how you decorate the shapes. I used air drying modelling clay to make flowers and eggs. These were cut using cookie cutters. The shapes need time to dry out – a couple of days.
We’ll be decorating flower shapes at Toddler Group. You could make these at home with your children and if you make a hole for string you could hang them on an Easter Tree.
Smooth the edges before the clay dries
Decorate using PVA glue, tissue paper and sequins
A few years ago I made a similar craft using salt dough – I must admit that the shop bought air drying modelling material (long name!) was easier and seems less brittle. The salt dough egg post is here
‘Love heart flowers cards’ – This is an easy make for Mother’s Day which is only a couple of weeks away! The flowers and leaves are made by cutting out heart shapes from coloured sugar paper. I don’t cut these out with scissors ; I use paper cutters. Paper cutters or punches can be expensive but if you use them a lot they are soon worth the money spent. It would take me for ever to cut out hearts! The other shapes are squares/rectangles for the vase and thin strips of green paper for the stalks.
Handy tip – if your paper punch begins to get blunt cut a few shapes out of aluminium foil to sharpen it.
The fish outline is a free download from :-
<a href=”https://clipartfest.com/”>clipartfest.com</a>
The colourful ‘scales’ are mini cup cake cases cut in half. I bought them from Amazon. The fins are the cases cut into quarters.
We were doing the story of Peter being called to follow Jesus from Mark 1:16. As Peter was a fisherman we made fish! For the next few weeks our stories will be about the things Peter saw and heard and did the first Easter. Here’s Peter..with his boat and fish.
The next four weeks will be
Each time the focus will be on what Peter saw and heard and did. I am hoping that while each short story will be interesting for the children they will also give the adults an understanding of what happened and why.
A 5 loaves and 2 fish craft to go with the Story of The Feeding of the 5,000 from John 15. There is an idea for telling the story here.
To make this easy craft all you need is
Preparation – attach half a paper plate to the construction paper/card beforehand. I used a stapler.
We made these last year and in a couple of weeks time will make them again at our Holiday Bible Club Christmas Special. The paper plate is cut to form a simple manger shape and then the plate is decorated using coloured tissue paper, a star and some shredded tissue paper. Once this is all done you fold the plate in half so it stands up! This is very simple to make and looks great.
This would be a lovely craft to make at home.
Here’s the one I made last year….
I was wondering what to do for thanking God for our mouths – a story that had food in it perhaps? But then remembered the man who came back to Jesus to say ‘thank you’. The story is from Luke 17:11-19. To tell the story I made ten men from wooden spoons. On one side of the spoon each man has a sad face and on the other a happy face. For young children there is an opportunity to practice counting to ten!
The spoons are from Ikea at 30p each.( It was very difficult to remove the labels from the spoons so in the end I left them on) I decorated the spoons with wool stuck on with PVA, tissue paper (with PVA) and sharpies. If doing this as a craft for children I wouldn’t use sharpies as I find that after a while they do give you a headache!
For telling the story the spoons were put into a block of oasis – and as the men were healed each one was turned around. You can add a bit of suspense here – ‘One man was better – was man number two – lets see! How about man number three?’ – and so on.
The main aim of the story was to thank God for our mouths that we can use for saying kind words like thank you.
For the Bible story we used Luke 7:36-46. This is a difficult story to tell as it probably seems strange to us that someone would anoint a persons feet. You need to explain that in those days people would wash their feet when they went into a home as they would be dusty and hot. But when Jesus went for a meal at this man’s house he wasn’t given any water to wash his feet. Explaining this helps to make sense of what happens when the woman pours the expensive ointment or perfume on Jesus’ feet. The man didn’t really like Jesus all that much but the woman knew that he could forgive her and she showed how grateful she was.
I used a story bag to tell the story- the perfume bottle is a miniature dove moisturiser!
The craft was perfume pictures – collect lots of collage material – tissue paper shapes, wool etc and beforehand spray with perfume. Put in a sealed container until needed. The collage material is then used to make pictures that are scented. I had some flower pot and flower shapes left over from a previous craft but you could use any shapes. It’s the scent that you want!
Alternative craft with playdough idea can be found here and an alternative story idea and craft here
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.
To make a small model of a bible time house all you need is an empty cardboard box, double-sided tape, paint, brown crayon, scissors, sugar paper.
Start by taking the box apart to it’s net – so you can turn it inside out – and then remake it using double-sided tape. ait it. Leave it to dry. Add some crayon colour to give it some ‘texture’. Add the steps up to the roof, door and window and some shrubs using sugar paper. And it’s all done.
Children aged 7 up could easily make their own house (younger children would need some help). You could make a whole village.
This is a very easy palm leaf craft. The basic shape is cut from construction paper (5 at a time). Then there are two shades of tissue paper, squares of green construction paper and some shiny cellophane – this was not great to cut up as it clings to you! It’ll look nice and I like to use stuff up – this was wrapping for a bunch of flowers. The wax crayons are shades of green.
Genesis 1 tells us how it all began. It is a chronological telling of how the world began. Once there was just God and then he spoke the world into being. Our beginning matters because if God made us then this is his world and we are accountable to him. So do we Adam and Eve it? (rhyming slang for do you believe it 🙂 )
When we tell the story of creation to children there are a few things that can help us. First the order of everything is significant. Everything was made in the right order for life to be sustained. (You would of course explain that more simply 🙂 ). The food was made before the animals who were going to eat it. The sea before the fish that needed to swim in it. When people were made the world was ready for them.
For older children who will be learning that creation is a myth/fairy story it’s useful for us to be able to point them towards creation apologetics. They need to make their own minds up – we can give them information so that they are informed. Answers in Genesis Kids is a good resource for this.
There are loads of great crafts to help us teach about creation. Here are some ideas from this blog
paper plate creation – I’ve used this to tell the story of creation.
Fish in the sea
And a pinterest board with more ideas
Sometimes I manage to find something when I need it! Today I managed to locate a bag of petals and flower pots that were left over from a summer themed craft last year. They are now going to be used to make mother’s day cards. One of the helpers at toddler group is a committed car boot enthusiast and found some great card making shapes just last week and some green tinsel. The latter is going to be cut up (it’ll be messy!!). These will also be used in the card making 🙂 Before toddler group I’ll spray the flower shapes with perfume. This makes for a lovely scratch n sniff card.
This year I have bought blank cards with envelopes from hobbycraft – they are pre-folded and colourful and I just fancied having an envelope too. A chance meeting with a friend, who was also in hobbycraft, and she agreed that paying extra for the envelopes was worth it!
Our bible story will be about Jochebed – Moses mum.
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.
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.
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!
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.
‘And the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.’
Luke 1:30,31
Make a stained glass ‘window’
You will need – black square paper plates, black paper for the stars (my paper punch wouldn’t go through the paper plate), star paper punch, assorted bright coloured tissue paper (torn or cut into smallish pieces), glue, cover film (Tacky back)
The paper plate is the window. Cut out the centre and fill the gap with the tacky back – sticky side on the same side as the black rim of the plate. Don’t discard the tacky back backing yet but use it to cover the sticky side till you are ready to make the window.
Cut the simple shapes to represent Mary, Joseph and the manger from the part of the paper plate that was cut out to make the window frame.
To make – stick lots of flat pieces of tissue paper over the tacky back covering it.
Glue on Mary, Joseph, the manger and star making sure that the black side of the shapes is at the front.
This craft has a bit of preparation – there is some cutting out for an adult or older child to do. I made a template to speed the process up!
All you need to make the ‘baby in the manger’ scene is :-
Good quality paper plates – preferably with a definite rim. You will be using the back of the plate.
Tissue paper cut into squares – dark blue and yellow
Shredded tissue paper – yellow
Brown paper cut into small squares
Grey/dark crayons to shade the silhouette of the baby’s head
Stars
Glue sticks
To make –
Have an example to show the children and explain what it is that they are making.
Stick the tissue paper and brown paper followed by shredded tissue to make the straw. Add the star and shade the silhouette of the babies head.
For this stage give children an additional paper plate to act as a support under the craft plate. It will make sticking much easier.
When everything has dried the final stage is to fold the plate.
Here’s some simple instructions for making the Baby Moses paper plate craft. I’ve made a baby Moses paper plate craft before (you can find it here) but wanted something a little simpler for our Holiday Bible Club as we don’t have a lot of time per age group. So this time there was no drawing round hands and the paper plate is a square plate.
To prepare the Baby Moses paper plate craft I pre cut a slit in each square plate, prepared a piece of green card the right size to slot into the slit and printed lots of baby Moses’s (there is a link to the download below) and basket lids.
The children needed to cut the green card to make reeds, slot into the plate (a leader then used cellotape to secure the green card under the plate), the children mould a plasticine basket and place a coloured in Moses inside. The plate was decorated with blue and white tissue paper. A label was added ‘God kept Moses safe’ by ________ ; the children fill in the blank with their name.Â
You could use air drying clay to make the basket but the plasticine was pretty much mess free. There is a softer version of plasticene for young children.
Moses has a sad face because he was crying when the basket was opened.
Square blue paper plates are from here
Plasticine also from here and also Hobbycraft and WHSmith.
Two free downloads of the baby Moses and lids for the baskets Baby Moses (x 24) Baby Moses Basket Lid (x 12)
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We’ve been learning about ourselves at toddler group. This was our last session this half term and was all about talking. The story was the Tower of Babel. We used actions to show building (fists on top of each other over and over – like the rhyme one potato. two potato), talking (using our hands to opening and closing), our tower getting higher and higher (stretching up high) and God looking down (hand above eyes looking down). When God was not happy that the people thought they were more important than him he sent new words and people couldn’t understand each other (everyone shrug shoulders). They had to stop building the tower.
But we still have words – we can say hello (everyone say hello) and we can sing … and then we sang some songs.
We had 43 adults and their children today so busy but happily so 🙂
Craft idea – megaphone! Sorry for the poor light for some of the photos – it’s the same piece of green card! Beforehand cut the card as shown and roll to make a cone shape. I used cellotape to stick the card to make the shape.
Then let the children decorate – the smiley face stickers are from Waitrose. Very reasonably priced and a good size. Sticky stars would be good too.
This craft is suitable for all ages – all you need is collage materials, facial features cut from magazines or pictures from the internet, glue, face shapes and sugar paper. Older children can cut out the facial features they want to use. You can either go for proper likenesses or make some funny crazy faces.
I used faces from Amazon
You could use this craft for Thank you God for my eyes, ears, mouth, nose. With toddlers there are lots of opportunities to talk about our faces as the craft is made.
Picasso made a lot of funny faces – you might want to print some of his pictures to show the children. Take a look at this Pinterest board.
It’s harvest celebration time! At toddler group we often mark this event at story and craft time. The story is usually focused on saying ‘thank you’ for our food. I have a basket of various fruit and veg (all real) to show to the children and as I take the fruit and veg out of the basket we name them and I mention what we can use the veg for – eg potatoes can be mashed or made into chips! And sometimes where the fruit or veg grows; potatoes in the ground, apples on a tree. It’s also good to have some wheat or flour and a loaf of bread. But choose things that suit where you are. Our aim is to say thank you for the food that God gives us.
This is a paper plate craft of a basket with fruit and veg inside (these can be made from card) – The two plates are cut beforehand to create a handle. Then at toddler group they are glued together so that the paper fruit and veg can slot inside and be carried in a harvest ‘basket’. The basket can be decorated – we used tissue paper and foam stickers. You need fairly sturdy paper plates so the handle doesn’t tear. PVA glue is best for sticking the plates together. You could have some cellotape to hand if needed.
Here is another harvest craft idea here.
