Fun (and different!) Sunday school activities for your preschoolers and kindergarteners!

 

Read a lesson, do a craft, play a little game, say a prayer...and repeat.  Over and over.  Are you tired of sending home crafts with your littles that just end up in the trash?  Are you feeling bored with what you've been teaching?  Here are some fun, UNIQUE activities I created that you can use to spice up your Sunday mornings (or anytime!) with your littles!  

Change up your lesson by doing a short Escape room with them!  Yes, littles can "escape" too! Here are 3 Escape rooms/Break out Boxes (and a bonus!) that I made that can be secular, or can be attached to a lesson that you are learning. 

1.  "Listening" Escape Room - this one would be great to do in conjunction with the Samuel story, Mary and Martha, or any other Bible story where "listening" is your theme.  There are 3 activities your children must complete and all 3 require them to use their listening skills!  This requires more set up by the teacher than the one below.  It is geared towards kids ages prek-2nd grade.

2.  "Lost" Break out box - This break out box is based on any of the "lost" parables - Parable of the Lost Coin, Lost Son, and Lost sheep (or any parable where you're searching for something or someone is lost). The children (ages prek-2nd grade) will be searching for the lost item just like in the story. This is an easy lesson with very little set up for the teacher - you just need a printer and painters tape (key lock with lock box is optional)! Depending on how many hints you give your kids, it could take them anywhere from 10 minutes to 20-30 minutes! Gauge their interest and energy level and give hints accordingly :) 

3.  Jonah/Temple Tax Escape Room - Here is a 10-20 minute escape room also geared towards prek-2nd graders :) This could be done anytime, but I had two stories in mind when writing it - Jonah and/or the temple tax (Matthew 17 when peter gets a coin from inside a fish). All four puzzles are finding objects inside of other objects. 

4.  I also created a short Paul and Silas escape room to use during VBS - this is a freebie and doesn't cost anything :) It was designed to be finished in 10-15 minutes.

Another game I made for prek is Bible Zingo!  It's Bingo with a twist!

5.  Bible Zingo - Here are the basic rules...

It’s just like BINGO, but fast paced. You could play it different ways - click the link to read two ways.

Included in this powerpoint...

There are 50 Zingo cards so 50 kids can play at one time. Each card has six pictures. There are 48 different pictures of Bible stories and church. If you’d rather play with 4 pics per cards, then just cut two off. Slides 5 and 6 have all the pictures miniature size so they’re easy for you to see. You can use those as the playing cards, or, if you’d rather have bigger ones, slides 7-14 also contain all 48 pictures. You can use those as playing cards and as Zingo cards (so print them out twice).

I've also created 2 booklets that you can do over multiple Sundays with your kids, or all at once.  

6.  My 5 Senses Booklet - Bible Version - Using Scripture, teach your preschoolers (or kindergarteners) about their 5 senses!

Samuel - "Hear"

Psalms - "See"

Last Supper - "Taste"

Jacob and Esau - "Smell"

Jesus heals - "Touch"

Each page has a "sense" and a scripture verse. You can spend a Sunday morning/week on each page and read each story in its entirety in the Bible (and each page can be its own craft), or you can do it all in one sitting and just read the Scripture and not the entire story.

Included at the end for the teacher is a page of instructions on how they can illustrate each page (or do something on your own!). 

7.  ABC Religious Christmas Booklet - This is a printable ABC Christmas story book. Each page has the letter, a word, a scripture (or explanation), and a picture to draw or color (or activity). The activities are age appropriate for prek/K...maybe first grade as well.

For example, for "R" it says "Color in and decorate the bells. While you’re coloring, sing a Christmas song!"

If you're looking for a curriculum or something to do for 4-6 weeks, I have started writing a "Little Books of the Bible Series".  Each book contains one book of the Bible (or various if the books are short).  Included are major stories from the book, verses to memorize, short stories, and songs we sing from that book!  In addition, there is a little game to play at the end - although they require reading skills.

Read the books together and illustrate them as a class or individually!

8.  Mark

9. Matthew

10.  Luke

11.  Genesis

12.  Exodus to Deuteronomy

Are you looking for a fun activity to put in your worship bags?  You could also do these during Sunday school as a group.  These are 5 dice games where each number helps you complete a drawing.  I am not an artist so they are basic figures/shapes - but the kids will enjoy filling them in.  And the cool thing is, if each child is doing it on their own, they will all look different!

13.  5 Bible Dice Games 

14.  Journaling! - Have you ever thought about journaling with your prek or K classes?  Here are some fun journal prompts!

Here is a craft idea I put together called the "Blessing Jar".  You use it before mealtimes to say a blessing for the food.  You can use it all year and can make it anytime as well (although Thanksgiving is a good time to start it :) 

15.  Meal Blessing Jar - print out the blessings, glue them onto popsicles sticks and pull one out before each meal.  My kids LOVED doing this and we did it for almost 10 years as a family!

Lastly, I made some games that can be projected up on the wall that you can all play together!  They are called "Reveal the Picture".  As you review one of the following stories, you click on part of the picture to reveal.  See if they can guess the story you are revealing before it's completely done!  (please watch the instructional video so you know how to make the questions appear and disappear)

16.  Beatitudes, 10 Commandments, and the Lord's Prayer

17.  Joseph and King David

18.  Spot the Item - Have you played the game Spot it! before?  All they have to do is spot the same item on both cards.  I made one that has items from the Bible.  Each slide has one object that is the same.  See if they can spot it!  And then, we they do, talk about the object and where it is mentioned in the Bible.  There is also a character version that is not Biblical.

Hopefully one of these ideas will help you get out of any rut you may be in :)  Good luck and God bless!  Thank you for all you do for your church and the littles you work with!

Wedding and "Peruvian Typical Flash Dance"!

 

Ella in her "Caporales" costume.

Ella and her dance partner David :)

We are currently living in Ayacucho, Peru and the Principal's daughter (at our kids' Christian school) got married this past weekend.  For the wedding, she wanted some of her friends to do a "Flash dance" with typical Peruvian dances.  So, about 20 youth/young adults got together and learned 5 different Peruvian dances.  The cool thing they did with these dances, was to, in typical "Flash dance" style, add in people with every dance.  there were five dances with 2 couples in each dance.  So, the first dance was the Marinera dance with two couples.  The second dance was 2 couples, but then the two previous couples joined in...and so on.  So, at the end, all 20 were dancing :)  Each dance took about 2 minutes so the total time is around 10 minutes.  The video is embedded at the end.  Before that though, there were some fun and neat things that happened in the wedding that I had never seen before - and really liked!  I love seeing new wedding traditions...well, new to me :) 

There were 3 groomsmen and 3 bridesmaids - but they didn't walk in together.  They all walked in separately - with different responsibilities.  One bridesmaid was the ring bearer and one was the flower "girl".  The bride's sister walked in by herself.  The three groomsmen had other responsibilities...

The first groomsmen brought in a sign that says "God" and then "Brian and Sherida" underneath.  The pastor announced, as he walked up the aisle, that this new family had been formed "under God".  Very cool!

The second one announced the entrance of the "Novio" (Groom).

The last groomsman brought in a sign that said "Here comes the woman you asked God for" <3 How sweet is that??

Also, when the groom and bride walked up the aisles, instead of being escorted by a parent(s), they walked alone, and were met halfway by their mom/dad.  It was sweet to watch :)  

Something else I had never seen before, was that they had "guards", which we would probably call "escorts".  They escorted the couple to the reception, and entered the church at the end to lead them out.

I do not know if the above things were something the couple thought up on their own, or if it's done here a lot.  I have only seen one other wedding here.  At both weddings, for the couple's first dance at the reception, the grandmothers threw rose petals on them while they danced.  Unfortunately, I didn't get a pic of it happening - just of the petals on the ground afterwards :)  It's a neat tradition.

Now to the dancing :)  Before dinner, some of their friends (also in the Flash Dance), did a fun little dance to help kick things off.  Ella, my daughter, is the one on the far right in the red/silver :)  If you want to see the video directly in youtube, here is the link.

After dinner, we saw another tradition we hadn't seen before.  Here, people bring up their presents one by one...kind of like in a conga line :)  And the presents?  Wow.  Holy Moly.  Cabinets, furniture, refrigerator, one set of parents gave land (!), and a motorcycle!  They just kept coming!  It probably lasted 30-40 minutes!

After the gifts, and after the group of youth got changed into their costumes, they did their dance.  Here it is!  The five traditional dances are Marinera, Valicha, Tahumpa (music from the Selva/jungle), Saya, and Tinkus.  I'm not sure how big the video will appear in this blog, so here is the link if you want to see it directly in youtube.

We also learned that weddings here are ALL day events!  We arrived at the wedding at 10 and left after the dance at 8pm...and they kept partying until midnight! lol

Thanks for following along in our journey here in Ayacucho!  God bless!

In Christ,

The Juarez Family

No, I'm not looking lol

I had to include these two pics 😂 While we were at the wedding, we took Gemma to be groomed - so she wasn't home alone all day and we didn't have to take her with us.  Plus, she realllly needed to be shaved and clipped.  But they put jewels and bows on her! 😂  We couldn't believe it when we picked her up! lol

50 Church Fundraiser ideas!

A few weeks ago, I made a "Faithful" Family Feud church game and asked 50 questions.  One of them was about fundraisers you do in your church.  I got such a plethora of answers, and I have seen the question posted (What fundraisers does your church do?) over and over again in multiple Educator facebook groups; that I decided to write a blog with all the ideas I received!  I also went through all the groups I'm in and got past answers and ideas.  Maybe one of these will spark a new idea for your church!

1.  Selling pine needles - this was big in one of my churches in NC for a number of years.  It requires a lot of volunteers, it goes on for months, but it yielded $10,000.  If you can get the manpower, it's a great option.

2. Baked goods sale - this was a hugely popular one, but when I've done it in the past, it didn't bring in tons of money.  Coupling it with another fundraiser would be a good idea.

3.  Spaghetti dinner/Dinner/Chili cook off - This was also a top answer.  I turned the spaghetti dinner into a meatball cook off at one church and this was a lot of fun!  Each table had a different crockpot with meatballs and you could go around and try each one.  You had to pay to eat, plus there were cans at each table where you used "coins" to vote for the meatballs you liked best - so a double whammy ;)  I thought "meatballs" were more kid friendly than chili - and not as spicy lol.  It ended up being a pretty good fundraiser and we gave the winner a donated giftcard to an Italian restaurant :) 

4.  Bridge Tournament - Ok, this may sound weird, but bear with me!  I heard about this somewhere and attempted it at one of my churches.  If Bridge is popular where you are (this may go over better in the south?), this is a very simple fundraiser and you make quite a bit of money.  You need an organizer that knows how Bridge is played, then you need to get volunteers to provide some yummy finger foods.  Find a nice venue (someone's house?  church?) and buy a couple of prizes for first and second place.  You charge $25 per person ($50 per team), so you earn $100 per table.  In our small-ish church, I think we had 6 tables playing so we earned $600 (minus $50 for the prizes we bought).  It was very little set up and preparation, it only lasted a few hours and there was very little clean up.  So, we earned $550 for 2-3 hours of work :)  If you have a larger church, you could easily double that!

5.  Car Wash - This was another top answer.  I'm not sure this yields much money, but it's popular and the kids/youth enjoy doing it :) lol  Saw one church actually did this during the church service.

6.  Garage sale/Rummage Sale - I'll admit.  I hate these lol.  It's SOOOO much work and preparation and sometimes you make hardly anything.  One church I worked at collected items all year and spent the entire week leading up to the sale preparing items.  They earned $5000-6000 so I guess it was worth it - but I can think of funner ways to earn that much lol.

7.  Pancake Dinner/Breakfast - this was the last suggestion that got more than five votes.  I've also done this before.  Like the spaghetti dinner, it's easy prep work and not tons of clean up.  Depending on how many you serve, this can be a pretty productive fundraiser - especially if you pair with another (like the car wash or yard sale so they eat while they are already there).

8.  Wall of Envelopes/Wall o Money - I've seen this done and, believe it or not, it's pretty effective.  We needed to fundraise for a mission trip and our organizer put up envelopes all over a bulletin board with items that we would need to purchase for the trip.  So, some envelopes said $10 Hammer, or $50 paint can, etc.  It was a great visual and people felt like they were contributing "things" and not just money.  For the first couple of years, this worked really well.

9.  Church Cookbook

10.  Flamingo Flocking - I have always wanted to do this! 😂 But I'm weird like that ;) lol  I saw one church did it with a pink toilet ;)

11.  Pumpkin Patch

12.  Auction/Silent Auction

13.  Other Food sales - Boston Butt, Soup, fudge, fish fry, bar-b-que, tacos (this probably depends on your region)

14.  Carnival - Could pair this with an activity you already do - like maybe your fall festival?

15.  Special Offering - some churches skip fundraisers and just ask for a special offering for things they need.  I saw one church who used to do a special offering for their family mission trip.  The kids would dress up in their past tshirts and walk around with big orange work buckets asking for money.  Worked pretty well :) 

16.  Children's camp/VBS - evidently some churches use profits from these camps as a fundraiser!

17.  Escape Room - this is something I wanted to do (and I've seen others talk about doing something similar), but then COVID got in the way and I never followed through.  I've written many religious escape rooms and they aren't too hard to set up (etsy link to bundle of 6 non-holiday escape rooms).  I wrote a Christmas one and wanted to set up one of our rooms at the church just for this.  Families/small groups (no more than 8-10) could sign up during the week or on the weekend to complete the escape room together.  Escape rooms tend to charge around $20 per person.  I was going to charge half that - $10 per person and then some kind of discount for a group of ten (like a maximum of $75?).  They get one hour to "escape".  If you were open 5 hours a week for 3 weeks, you could potentially make $1000.  It costs around $50 max to set up (and that's if you buy all the bells and whistles).  

18.  Christmas Store for kids - I started doing this with the kids at our church and community, because their schools stopped doing it.  They had no where to buy gifts for their families and friends!  I bought items on sale after christmas (and throughout the year) and then sold them the next year.  I didn't do it as a fundraiser - I just did it to help out our kids - but you could easily bump up the price 50 cents-$1 on items and make some money.

19.  Selling flowers - One church talked about getting flowers/hanging baskets at wholesale from a local greenhouse and they sold them at the end of August as a fundraiser.

20.  Fellowship nights - I wrote a blog of over 20 ideas for intergenerational fellowship activities.  You could charge for basically any of these and turn it into a fundraiser!  (paint night, movie night, etc!)

21.  Restaurant nights - many local restaurants are now offering 20% or so of the proceeds for one evening when people go there from your church.  Just an FYI, we took a mission trip to Peru and did one of these nights at a peruvian restaurant.  After talking with the owner (who was peruvian and was so on board with what we were doing), he ended up giving us 100% of the proceeds!  Not everyone will be this generous, but maybe try and look for restaurants that may be connected with what you're fundraising for.

22.  Coffee bar/breakfast on Sunday mornings

23.  5k Fun Run

24.  Easter "Egging" - This was by far my FAVORITE fundraiser I've ever done - because it was also an outreach <3  (see my blogpost about it for more details).  For $10 we hid a dozen stuffed eggs in someone's yard for you.  For $20 we did 2 dozen and $30 we did 3 dozen.  We gave lots of options - you could ask for only candy or only prizes (we had some with special diets), we offered baskets instead of hiding them, and for an extra $5 we would hide them Easter Eve (otherwise we delivered them the week before Easter).  We tried this during Covid, we didn't advertise much, and it was our first year.  Without really trying, we made $500!  And neighbors bought for neighbors, elderly members bought for grandkids, kids bought for grandparents, elderly bought for elderly!  It was so beautiful!  And I loved delivering them :) This was our sign up that we used if you'd like to see how we did it.  You can't see the actual sign up, but you can read our instructions.

25.  M&M tubes - A few churches said they've handed out M&M mini tubes and asked people to eat the snack, then return the empty container with quarters!  A word of caution from one Educator - do this with adults - not youth and kids (otherwise you'll get way more eaters than donaters! 😂) lol

26.  Pie in the face - the ever popular pie in the face fundraiser (or something similiar).  You put a jar out for different staff people and see who raises the most money in their jars.  Whoever does, gets a pie in the face ;)

27.  Grocery stores - I know many stores do this for schools and evidently some do it for churches or other organizations.  You connect your grocery card to an organization and part of the proceeds go to that place.

28.  Photo Shoots - if you have a professional photographer in your church willing to donate a few hours, you could offer some time slots for a price and the pics get emailed to them.

29.  Sponsor a child - (this is great for trips)

30.  Advent Boxes - many give these out to families, but you could make it a fundraiser as well!  Especially if your church does a holiday bazaar!

31.  Golf Tournament/Golf Scramble

32.  Rock-a-thon - This is another one I always wanted to do, but it never got off the ground.  It is SOOO simple and raises quite a bit of money.  It's like any other "a-thon" except it's rocking chairs :)  You form teams of 4 people and for 2 hours, one person in your group HAS to have their butt in the chair and be rocking :)  Each member of the group is asked to raise $50 worth of sponsors so each group raises a minimum of $200.  Each team gets a section of the room to decorate and there is a theme (sports teams, Bible stories, Book characters, etc).  People can go around and vote (with coins) for the best "decked out" rocking chair space and costumes :)  My old church does this and they earn $2-3000 EASY.  And it's only 2 hours of your time! no set up or clean up.  They did it after church one sunday and included a bake sale/lunch that could be bought.  Seriously great fundraiser that any age could do!

33. Movie Theater fundraiser - many theaters will let you rent out one theater for an evening.  You can pick the movie.  We did this and it cost around $500 or so for the theater.  The theater sat close to 100 people so if you charge $5 a ticket you break even.  If you charge $7 a ticket and sell them all, you make a profit.  Our local schools did this as well.  We didn't do it as a fundraiser for our church and ended up losing $150 or so - but we did it as an outreach and didn't charge that much.  At our theater, they also allowed you to sell snacks and baked goods outside the theater!

34.  Parent Night out - we started this right before COVID as an outreach and we were breaking even every night - even after feeding the kids pizza and paying for childcare!  I think you could definitely make this a fundraiser.

35.  Church shirts - We bought 50 long sleeve shirts with our church logo on it.  We bought them for $10 each and sold them for $20 each.  We sold almost all of them!  My only bit of advice is to buy more XL's than you think :) lol  

36.  Kids' consignment sale - a lot of work, but can be very profitable.

37.  Asking for donations but use a visual - The visual reminder and motivation always helps - We had a quarter tube that was 3 feet tall at our VBS to raise money for Heiffer International and the kids LOVED dropping the quarters in the tubes and begged their parents for quarters :)  I've also seen thermometers on the wall to measure how much they've raised, pie charts, etc.

38.  Soup in a jar kits/Cookies in a jar kits - kids and youth can help put these together!  Great Christmas gifts!

39.  "Noisy offering" - a few churches have posted about this and it sounds like a fun idea :)  If you are raising money for the kids' ministry, you give the kids metal cans (with lids) and have them go around and collect "noisy" money from the congregants...all the while shaking their cans! 😂  Those that have done this say the kids LOVE making all the noise and the adults enjoy it as well (and they raise quite a bit!).

40.  Selling boxed lunches after church for people to take home

41.  "A-thons!" - fish, verse, hymn, bike, etc.

42.  Raffle

43.  Trivia Night

44.  Youth wrapping Christmas fundraiser

45.  Art Auction - ages preschool - ?? can participate!  One church raised over $10,000 with this!

46.  Superbowl Sunday  - make and take pizzas or subs

47.  Selling stock - youth fundraiser

48.  Go Fund me if you're raising money for a particular object/trip.

49.  Raking leaves or other service project.

50.  Strange but easy and effective fundraiser - selling bottles of water for $1 before and after the service!

I challenge you to look through the list and see which ones you could pair together!  For example, for Superbowl Sunday, you could meet right after church to do the "rock a thon" - and make it a sports team theme where everyone decorates their area with their fave sports team.  Then, have a sub make and take where they can eat it there and/or take some with them for the big game!  Add in selling waters and a bake sale for dessert and you've got 4 fundraisers at the same time! :) :) 

Hope this helps someone!!  Thanks for all the ideas! :)