Finding a creative and inclusive activity that brings the entire classroom together while at the same time, incorporates the weekly lesson isn’t always super easy to come up with. In our teen class at Southeast Christian Church, our group seems to really enjoy the hands-on activities. I am always looking to find ways that we can all participate together. I also want the activity to have some relevance to what we have just learned. One of my fears is a parent coming to pick their child up and ask, “What did you learn in class today?” only to have their child reply with something about hot wings, spider monkeys, or dating (These are all frequently discussed topics in our class by the way).
I found an activity in a leader’s guide and modified it to make it more applicable to our group, specifically to our room.
That’s really it! Sounds almost too good to be true, right?
For this activity, our class had just talked about praying to God. One of the verses used in the lesson was Luke 11:1-4, the Lord’s Prayer:
“ ‘Father, may your name be honored.
May your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins, as we also forgive everyone who sins against us.
Keep us from falling into sin when we are tempted.’”
I knew our average attendance and thought about how our volunteers are usually paired up to help which told me about how many verse scrambles I should make. I took each sentence and wrote one word on a sheet of paper and then scrambled the sentence up like a deck of cards. I then handed the scrambled stack to the class to see who could unscramble it first.
Since it is always helpful to see a demonstration of what should be done, I made a small version of my own with the bible verse. As I explained the instructions to the class, I taped up the words on the wall behind me.
After that, it was up to the class to put the entire verse together.
Thankfully, we have a large eraser board as well as a really large window so I wasn’t too worried about having an entire classroom of people tape the paper to the wall. I was worried that something might happen to the paint!
If you are concerned about your handwriting, feel free to add the verse into a Word document and print that out.
If your group loves to color, you might be able to find an outline font and pass the words out randomly at the beginning of class with the instructions to color them ahead of time. When class is almost over, you can have everyone bring their words together and see if they can put together the verse.
If you need a few more creative and fun ideas for your class, check these out:
