When I first began as a teacher, it took me several years to gain my footing at being confident in what I was doing. With the help of my co-teachers and a wonderful director I began to feel at ease in a classroom. Teaching a math lesson, or teaching a child how to read soon became an easy task. When I stepped into the role of directing our church’s preschool choir class, then our Awana Cubbies program, the transition from a school classroom to classroom ministry was easy. However, when it came to telling the Bible story during Cubbies, I always passed the role to another teacher. For some reason I was really intimidated with sharing God’s word to preschoolers. Same thing happen when I would teach Vacation Bible School. It wasn’t until I actually stepped into the role of teaching our Truth & Training Girls (grades 3rd through 6) that I had to step out of my comfort zone and learn how to confidently teach a Bible lesson to kids!
It’s been about 20 years since then. With the help of mentor teachers, attending conferences for ministry leaders and my own desire to do better, I now feel confident to lead the Bible story in any of my classes! I have found it’s easy to find resources to teach elementary kids pretty much any story from the Bible, but when it came to Preschoolers it was harder to find much past the general stores most kids hear about. It is important that we teach about creation and Noah’s ark, but it’s also important to begin to introduce our little ones to stories that are often reserved for older children. Thankfully I am seeing a lot more curriculum now that is including more of those less famous stories and finding lots of creative and age appropriate ways to teach them to younger and older children.
This is one of the workshops I teach at various conventions, “Tell Me the Story Most Precious: Making the Bible Come Alive for Preschoolers” In this workshop I help leaders discover how they capture them and connect their lives with the word of God and sharing a lot of creative ideas to use during story time. An updated handout will replace the one below once I get it ready for my upcoming workshop.
Tell Me the Story Handout
Handout from the BASS convention 2020
TMTStory Answers Answers to the above handout
Creative Ways to Tell a Story This handout also includes the explanation of the Head, Heart and Hands Method of asking Questions, Connecting Preschoolers to the Word of God and Connecting Past with Present for Preschoolers