Beyond Cotton Ball Sheep

A couple helpful resources to share with you today:

First, this book, Ready-to-Use P.E. Activities for Grades K-2, is great for jogging your memory for active games younger kids can understand. Most of us haven’t played very much “What Time Is It, Mr. Fox?” in our adult lives, but such activities are invaluable when presented with a spare ten minutes and a group of ten kids who just want to RUN. At Smithfield, we’re lucky enough to have a full gymnasium in the basement of the church, but many of these games can be played in a social hall or even a large classroom. Although a few activities call for more exotic supplies, like scooters and a parachute, most require things you probably already have around the church (balls, hula hoops, carpet squares) or don’t need any supplies at all.

Another, more church-specific, active game book is Jolene Roehlkepartain’s 101 Great Games for Kids. Each of the clever activities in the book is connected to a Bible story, and there’s an index in the back so you can quickly find games that connect to the story you’re reading that week. Most of the games last only a couple minutes, so they would be great for an attention-grabbing opener at the beginning of a class session.

Second, as much as we’d all like to provide innovative and creative activities every moment that the children are in church, sometimes you still need worksheets and coloring pages. I put a couple in each worship activity bag during the summer months, and I keep extras in the classrooms in case kids finish the class activity early. They’re also good for keeping flower girls and ring bearers occupied when the bride is late for the wedding rehearsal.

You can spend hours searching for Biblical coloring pages online. One of my favorite sources is Calvary Baptist Church in Williamsport, PA (an American Baptist congregation). They have a huge array of activity pages on their site, and while they’re not all impressive, many are worth printing. I was pleasantly surprised by most of the pages in the A-Z series. And, you don’t need to read Dutch to appreciate the detailed scenes available at the Reformed Church of Apeldoorn-Zuid in the Netherlands. Click the tiny printer icon in the right corner of each picture; the picture will open in a new window, and you can copy-paste the image into Word and re-size it to fill a full 8.5×11 page.

Please share your favorite active game books and coloring page sites in the comments!