Need some easy Sunday school activities to fill time? When your lesson is over but class time isn’t, what do you do? Make sure kids are bored no more! Try a Plan in a Can!
It’s Sunday morning, and you’ve just finished the entire lesson. You check the clock but see no parents coming down the hall. Then you quickly try to figure out what you’ll do with a room full of kids and no lesson left… Without letting them see you sweat.
You might be tempted to run. It’s not easy to think of creative, interesting ideas when extra time looms. But think of it as an honor that God chose you to have a few extra minutes with your kids.
When students are staring at you, remember that you’re pretty special. God selected you for this moment. Every extra minute kids get with you is his gift to them.
And you? You need a survival kit. A bucket of backup, a plan in a can. So we created two kits you can build on your own and store in your classroom. When you have extra time with kids, don’t sweat it. Just pull out your plan in a can and get busy!
In case you’re wondering, why call it a can? Why not a box or a bin or a bucket? It’s for those times when you’re wondering if you’ll be able to keep kids’ attention and bust their boredom. The name is a sweet reminder that yes, you can!
Easy Sunday School Activities: Games Galore!
The Ingredients
- Faithful Faces cards (printed photos, poster board, adhesive, and a laminator or clear adhesive vinyl) held together with a rubber band
- Sidewalk chalk
- Christian music CDs for kids
- Blacklight lamp
- Two large happy face images
- Two colors of plastic clothespins (enough for three per child)
Faithful Faces
Kids love The Memory Game. Place a bunch of cards face down, shuffle them, and have kids try to find matching cards by turning over two at a time. (If they don’t get a match, they turn the cards back face down and the next person goes. If they do get a match, they get another turn.)
Capitalize on this fun game model and reinforce the important faith faces in kids’ lives. Simply take pictures of students, missionaries in your church, Bible friends you’ve been learning about, families you’re praying for, and congregants. Then whip up your own version of the game.
Use photo paper or regular printer paper to print out two of each photo. Then mount them on poster board. Run the poster board through a laminator or apply clear adhesive vinyl, and you have a game worth talking about.
Kids will love finding their friends. And when they get a match, throw in a little challenge by giving them an extra point if they can remember who’s on the cards and what they know about them.
Sidewalk Chalk of Today’s Talk
Form groups of two to six. You can have as many or as few teams as you have the sidewalk space for. Have kids work together to draw one picture on concrete that says something about the day’s Bible story.
Best of all, when parents pick up their kids, you get a huge blessing. Students tell their parents what they learned without being prompted. For a bonus, take photos of kids and their drawings for a quick recap to start off the following week’s lesson. You can even make a Month-in-Review bulletin board starring kids as the teachers.
Music Freeze
If you think an hour is a long time for you, it’s like dog years to kids. They have wiggles they need to get out. So when you have extra time, turn up the music and let kids be as goofy as they want…until the music stops. Then they have to freeze in place. Add a twist with a blacklight. Changing the environment is a great break from everyday, and it lets kids know you always have a few surprises in store.
Clothespin Tag
Use this game to remind kids that no thief can steal our joy when we go to the Joy Source: God. Place the happy face images on the floor at opposite ends of a play area. Form two teams, and have each team go to one happy face. Assign each team a color of clothespin. Pin three clothespins to the back of each child’s clothing above the waist.
The goal: Each team tries to steal the other team’s clothespins and drop them on their team’s happy face. Play music to signal “go.” Let kids play for one minute or so. Then turn off the music to signal “stop.”
After a few starts and stops, end the game, declare the winning team with the most clothespins. Then let kids get more “joy” on their backs and play again. When you’re done, remind kids they can always find new joy with God.
