5 Bible Activities for the First Week of Sunday School

The first Sunday back is its own kind of hard. Half the class is new, the other half spent the summer forgetting where Genesis is, and somebody's little brother is under the table.

That week does not need your best lesson. It needs five minutes where everyone is looking at the same thing at the same time. Here are five that manage it, ordered by how little you have to prepare.

1. The one sentence circle

Five minutes. Nothing needed.

Go around the room. Each child says their name and one Bible story they already know, in one sentence. That is the whole activity. You will hear Noah four times and somebody will call it "the whale one," and both are fine.

Why it works. It tells you exactly what your class already has, which is something no curriculum can tell you. It also gets every child speaking inside the first ten minutes, which makes the quiet ones far likelier to speak again later.

2. Where does this go?

Ten minutes. One Bible per pair.

Give each pair a Bible and one story to find: Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Moses. The first pair with a finger on the right page reads one verse aloud.

Why it works. Knowing your way around the book is a skill, and it is almost never taught on purpose. Ten minutes in September pays off every single week after it.

3. Paint a hero

Twenty minutes. Needs ordering ahead.

Hand each child a plain white figure and a brush. No rules about accuracy. Purple hair on Abraham is fine.

Why it works. A child who spends twenty minutes painting Sarah has spent twenty minutes thinking about Sarah, which is longer than most lessons hold anybody. The paint gives slower children something to do with their hands while the talking happens around them.

Our Paint-Your-Own kits are $12.99 and come as one matte white figure, a paint set, and a brush, so there is nothing else to buy. Foundations of Faith is where most teachers start, since Abraham and Sarah go together. Two honest notes for planning: every figure is made to order and ships in three to five business days, so a class set wants ordering the week before rather than the night before, and the figures are made for ages three and up.

4. The remembering wall

Fifteen minutes. Paper and tape.

Each child draws the part of a story they remember best and tapes it to one wall. Leave it up all year. Add to it every week.

Why it works. By October the wall is doing the teaching. A child who joins in November can read the whole term off it in two minutes, and the children who were there in September can find their own handwriting.

5. One prayer each, out loud

Five minutes. A jar and slips of paper.

Every child says one prayer aloud. Any child who would rather not writes it and drops it in the jar, and you read a few at the start of next week's class.

Why it works. It makes praying ordinary instead of a performance, and the jar gives you a way to include the child who is not ready to speak yet.

One thing to skip in week one

Do not open with a craft that has to come out right. A first week craft that goes wrong sets the tone for a whole term, and glue always takes longer than anyone plans. Save it for week three, once you know the room.

None of these five are clever, and that is the point. The first week is for building the habit of showing up and paying attention together. The good lessons land much better in week four, when everybody knows where they sit.