Sunday School Plays

You are welcome to copy these plays for use in your Sunday School.

• The plays were written for children aged 6-10 years old with the intention that they did them in class with the text in front of them. (The idea was for them to learn the story - not to perform as such.) They generally take about 5 minutes, very few props and no dressing up. We usually did the play twice, often changing who had each role.
  

• They were for a class of between 7 and 12 children, so they generally contain a "crowd" or "group of apostles" or some such group that could be 2 or 10 people depending on the numbers that turned up so that everyone had a part.
  
• There is a range of reading levels in the parts - from fluent readers for the leading roles, to simple one line parts for the new readers.

• They were written to coincide with the theme for the week so may not contain the whole story.

God and Me - Lessons for Early Readers.

This is a seven week syllabus covering the main ideas about God, designed
with 5 to 7 year olds in mind. The syllabus uses a hand puppet of a spider as the main teaching aid. The spider theme goes into the workbook as well.

We provide lesson plans (28 kb word file) and the workbook (1mb word file) for you to download for use in a teaching setting. Two plays are used as well and they are provided on the website.

Topics covered are:
What is God like? - Noah’s flood
God cares about me - Jesus and the little children
I can be myself and God will love me - David and Goliath
God wants me to live in a particular way – The prodigal son
We can trust God – Daniel in the lions’ den
Talking to God – the Lord’s prayer
What does Easter mean?

The Triple S Challenge! (for Senior Sunday School)

A very popular challenge for 9 and 10 year olds.

We have introduced these "challenges" - something the children learn at
home and then have to do for their Sunday School teacher after class. We
have been simply amazed at how popular it has been!!!  We gave them about ten
weeks to complete each one.

We provided a certificate and a edible reward (nicely wrapped), which
was presented in GREAT style at the  Sunday School meeting immediately
following the child finishing the challenge. Its good to use an impressive
looking chart to record the children's progress on too!

Challenge 1

This challenge helps children to learn the meaning of common Christian phrases used in worship, such as in the Lord's prayer, the Aaronic blessing and so on.

We provide two versions of the challenge booklet for you to download:

Challenge 1 is designed to be an A5 booklet with the text being on both
sides of the paper. You print it all off in A4 and then copy it so that
it packs together as a book. This is the format we used.

Challenge 1 A4 is in A4 - you can print it off and you don't have to worry
about double-siding anything.

Feel free to modify the text as suits you.

Challenge 2 - the Old Testament

Challenge 2  This is on the Old Testament. Note that an
extra reward is offered if the children also learn the books of the
Prophets. We gave a small chocolate bar for this and a larger chocolate
box and certificate for doing the whole challenge. Over half of the
children learnt the Prophets even though it was voluntary.

The challenge should be xeroxed at A4 size, with the temple being
xeroxed onto A3 light card that is stapled separately into the middle.

Challenge 3 - Survival skills

Challenge 3  focusses on essential christian skills - prayer, bible
reading, church attendance and service.

It sets week-long goals for each area.

It was the least popular of the Triple S challenges that we did. The
kids seemed to find it too "fuzzy" to grasp. For this reason we recommend you don't
use it for your first attempt at getting the children to do challenges!

Challenge 4

The last triple S challenge book...    Challenge 4
This one is shorter than the others because it was for the term coming
into Christmas when there were many other activities. It was
enthusiastically received, and we ended up with a real village of houses. The challenge should be xeroxed on A4 paper. The two pages with the house parts need to be xeroxed onto light card.

Teaching about Communion (a 45 minute lesson)

This is a set of activities intended to be a lesson for the whole of the Sunday School to take together in the Presbyterian form of Communion. It is based on the words in the service used here at St Johns, but we would suggest you modify it to reflect the service that you use.

We took the children into church for the communion part of our service at the end of the lesson.

We did the day as:

- An introductory talk by one teacher about the words used for Communion (ie Communion, Lords Table, Eucharist, Mass) with the emphasis on that we did this in our way here at St Johns but that people all around the world in all sorts of churches were doing the same thing because it is so important to Christians.

- A play (which the teachers did for the whole class)

- We then had a teacher recap the main points on the board

- A set of worksheets, which we split into four groups for:

*senior communion worksheet (ages 11-13)
*middle communion worksheet (ages 8-10)
*junior communion worksheet (ages 5-7)
*The preschool children had a picture of bread and a cup of wine to colour.

- A questionnaire which the children had to fill in as they watched the communion service take place:

- Communion Quiz (This was xeroxed onto the back of everyone's worksheets)

Useful Web site links for Sunday School Teachers

This is an index site to a whole lot of information -- and a wide range of age-groups and stories is covered. The link takes you to the New Testament page - but in the top right hand corner you can see the index for Old Testament and Miscellaneous sections as well. It is probably the best site of the lot as it covers a wide range of stories and also has a range of age levels. http://mssscrafts.com/newtestament/

This site has some more worksheets etc on it but is less comprehensive and all the worksheets are very similar. Again the full range of age groups is covered - from colouring in sheets to quizzes and word searches. http://calvarychapel.com/children/site/curriculum.htm

This last site lets you make up your own word searches or crosswords using your own words. You change the type of puzzle with the "try other puzzles" box - it is very quick and easy to use. http://puzzlemaker.school.discovery.com/WordSearchSetupForm.html

Finally this site is probably only of interest to teachers of 5 to 8 year olds. It has craft and other activities - but it only covers the big bible stories and so it is of more limited use. http://www.dltk-bible.com/index.htm