Followers of Jesus – Tabitha toddler bible story

Followers of Jesus – Tabitha toddler bible story to tell in toddler group.

In Acts 9:36-43 we meet Tabitha (her Aramaic Name) or Dorcas (her Greek name), a follower of Jesus who sews clothes for the women in the church. The simple toddler group craft is a printout of a T-shirt that the children can decorate with fabric pieces. Use any fabric that you have!

When Tabitha dies the church leaders send for Peter. He comes to visit and seeing the sadness of the women he sends them out of the room, kneels down and prays. He takes Tabitha by the hand and says to her, ‘Tabitha, arise’. And Tabitha opens her eyes and sits up! It is a wonderful story.

Followers of Jesus Tabitha toddler bible story

To tell the story to young children have some dolls/puppets to represent Peter and Tabitha. Show something that has been sewn (a dress, or blouse). Take the items out of the story bag as you need them.

‘Say hello to Tabitha! She was a follower of Jesus. She cared very much about the other women in her church and she made them beautiful clothes. But one day something very sad happened – Tabitha died.

Everyone was very upset. They sent for Peter – one of the friends of Jesus. He came to see them straight away. He was sad too. He saw how much everyone missed Tabitha.

He knelt down and he talked to God. Straightaway something amazing happened. Peter looked at Tabitha’s body and he said, ‘Tabitha, get up.’ She opened her eyes, she sat up! Peter took her by the hand and helped her. Then he called out to the women – Come and see, Tabitha is alive and well again!’

How could Peter do that? Peter didn’t bring Tabitha back to life. Jesus did. And many people who heard about what had happened believed in Jesus.’

Tabitha Toddler Group Craft Idea

Tabitha T-shirt craft

This is an idea I’ve posted about before but this time it’s a download! A simple T-shirt outline for the children to cover in fabric.

All you need

  • Print out the T-shirt shape and photocopy for your group
  • Fabric cut into shapes that toddlers can handle (if you have pinking shears use them to prevent too much fraying. If possible have a variety of colours. Toddlers won’t necessarily cover the whole T-shirt so you may not need as much fabric as you imagine.
  • Glue sticks. We use these.

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Women in the Bible

Every now and then we do a series of toddler group stories about women. Most of the adults in our groups are women and it is easy to tell stories each week that are all male! So we intentionally include the women.

Here are five Bible stories about women with a craft…

The birth of Isaac to Sarah and Abraham. Here they are in their tent. Genesis 21.
Mary anoints Jesus – John 12:1-8 The craft is a jar of perfume.
The healing of peter’s mother in law. Mark 1:29-31
The story of Lydia who made purple cloth. Acts 16:11-15.
Tabitha who made clothes. Acts 9:36-42

Followers of Jesus – Tabitha

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.

IMG_2899

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 🙂

 

Tabitha -T-shirt craft

fabric pieces for craft
Tabitha-T-shirt craft
Tabitha - T_shirt craft

 Tabitha -T-shirt craft is a really lovely simple collage based craft. It is great to have a stash of fabric off cuts to use for craft – adding a different texture to paper and lots of colours.

The story of Tabitha (Dorcas) is found in the Bible in Acts 9:36-43. She was a follower of Jesus who helped others by making clothes. We used this story as an extension to ‘Thank you God for our hands’. The story was told to under threes using a bag of items that you need for sewing – scissors, material, thread, needle, pin cushion. These were taken from the bag one at a time and named. We also had a picture of Tabitha sewing. We didn’t talk about Tabitha dying and being bought back to life but you could do that with older children.

The above craft is a T-shirt outline to decoarte with fabric shapes and glue. I used a variety of colours and the children could also use crayons. A very simple craft but effective and fun.

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