Using Your Child’s Toys to Teach the Bible

Using Your Child's Toys to Teach the Bible - Parenting Like Hannah
Tower of Babel

This summer the children in our Church are having a blast creating their own Bible Museum. For thirty minutes every Wednesday night, they are divided into groups of  three or four children. We give each group a Bible and place the world’s largest stack of donated and yard sale “building” blocks, tiny plastic animals, fabric and tiny figurines in front of them.

Their mission is to take the Bible story assigned to them and make it come to life. They are told to refer back constantly to the Bible to make sure their re-creation is as accurate as possible. As you can see from some of these pictures, their creativity is amazing!

The fun part for me is watching them glance back at their Bibles (even though they have just read the story) to make sure they are getting the details right. Sometimes, they have to do some outside research. For example, would it be accurate to put a pyramid in the story of Joseph in Egypt?

Using Your Child's Toys to Teach the Bible - Parenting Like Hannah
Each square is a separate day of Creation

This is a fun rainy activity for home too. You can even turn it into a game by allowing your child to choose the Bible story, build the design with her toys and then have the rest of the family try to figure out which story it depicts.

As for ours, we are saving all of our creations for a few weeks. They will have colored backdrops added as well as titles and scriptures. Then we will set up our Bible Museum in our Fellowship Hall for our congregation to enjoy during our “Day of the Child” before school starts. I’ll try to get some pictures of the finished exhibit posted sometime this Fall.

So pull out your child’s toys and see how accurately you can re-create scenes from the Bible. Make sure reading the story from the Bible is part of the process. It is amazing how many of the small details we often miss as we glance over those familiar stories. Some of those details actually add to the amazement of what God did. I would love to see your creations. Please email photos of them to me at tswinnett@gmail.com.

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Thereasa Winnett

Thereasa Winnett is the founder of Teach One Reach One and blogger at Parenting Like Hannah. She holds a BA in education from the College of William and Mary. She has served in all areas of ministry to children and teens for more than thirty years and regularly leads workshops for ministries and churches. She has conducted numerous workshops, including sessions at Points of Light’s National Conference on Volunteering and Service, the National Urban Ministry Conference, Pepperdine Bible Lectures, and Lipscomb’s Summer Celebration. Thereasa lives in Atlanta, GA with her husband Greg, where she enjoys reading, knitting, traveling and cooking.

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