Your children might be breaking up for Easter today, or maybe, like my daughter, next Friday. I’ve been thinking about how I could teach the children leading up to Easter, a bit like I did at advent when my brilliant friends gave me their Pre-School Bible Overview Advent Calendar.
I haven’t ironed out all the creases yet (I’m speaking metaphorically of course, I don’t actually iron), but I thought I’d post this now so that you might be inspired to come up with something yourself, or maybe even pinch and tweak mine (the metaphors are coming thick and strong now).
I bought some Bible sticker books by Miles Kelly (My Bible Sticker Activity) from thebookpeople.co.uk, and they’re really good so I’ll use those as an activity each day. But if you don’t have the same sticker books, I’m sure you can Google craft activities or just print off a colouring sheet for the relevant Bible story. Or maybe you have a Bible activity book with a suitable page that hasn’t yet been filled in – I hope so!
Here goes, please find my little teaching outline below. BPSB is the Big Picture Story Bible by David Helm; BB is the Beginner’s Bible (from the Good Book Co I think?) and JSB is the Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones. Sorry if there are bits missing or it’s unclear – I have another week to work on it but wanted to post this today in case your children are off next week.
Each day we will hang up a plastic egg (we have loads left over from a church egg hunt) with the day’s message written on it (using an address label probably, nothing fancy) in order to keep track of what we’ve learnt, and to make it a bit festive.
Theme: God to the Rescue
| Day | Message | Story / Lesson | Activity (from Miles Kelly My Bible Sticker Activity books) |
| Monday 14th | God rescued Noah from the flood | BPSB p. 58-65 / God punished the world and he saved Noah + family. (You might need to give background here, i.e. start from the beginning (creation and fall) on the days leading up to it) | Noah’s Ark p.22-23 |
| Tuesday 15th | The Passover: God rescued his people from death | BPSB p. 114-129/ God’s people killed a lamb so that the lamb would die instead of their sons. God rescued his people from death by giving them ‘the great sign.’ (Again you may need to give a bit of context) | Moses and the Princess p.20-21 |
| Wed 16th | The Red Sea:God rescued his people from Egypt. | BB p. 111-115/ God rescued his people from the Egyptians by parting the Red Sea. | Moses and the Princess p. 22 |
| Thurs 17th | David/Goliath: God rescued his people from their enemies. | BB p. 173-180 or JSB/ God rescued the Israelite army from the Philistines by sending David to defeat Goliath. | David and Goliath p.20-23 |
| Friday 18th | Jesus came to raise the dead | Lazarus BPSB p. 338-352/Jesus came to rescue people from death | Colouring sheet (or Jesus and the Fishermen p. 8) |
| Saturday 19th | The Cross: God rescues his people from punishment. | p. 368-p. 373 (or just p. 373) Jesus died the death we deserve for sinning against God. | The First Easter p. 18-20 |
| Sunday 20th | TheResurrection: God rescues his people from death. | JSB: God’s wonderful surprise. God has rescued us from death by raising Jesus from the dead. Because he rose from the dead, we will too if we trust in him. | The First Easter p. 21 |
| Monday21st | New Life: We can be rescued from sin and death by believing in Jesus. | BPSB p. 414-423 (Pentecost)/ When we put our trust in Jesus, our old self dies and our new life begins, with God’s Holy Spirit living in us. (This is clearly a tricky concept for pre-schoolers, but it’s worth a go!) | The First Easter p. 22-23 |
Mum in Zone One 