How to teach early years kids about Jesus
Smallchildren just don’t understand how the world works - ever try and play hide and seek with one? Smaller children may hide inplain sight, slightly older ones will tell you where they are, and even the ones who understand hiding will probably still giggle loud enough to make your job easy or hide in the same spot every time. They just don’t get the point. This is how most of us feel about telling Bible stories to pre-school kids: it’s too complex for them and they just can’t understand!
Let’s start with some things your kids will be able to understand:
Colourful baby toys that spell out Have Fun.
They’ll know what’s important to you: If you take them to church, read Bible stories to them and talk about (and to) the Triune God then they’ll learn that these matter to you.
They’ll learn about people too: They’ll get to play with other kids their own age, they’ll see how you welcome new people, they’ll get to practice sharing and taking turns.
They’ll learn this is for them: As you let them read with you, answer questions, sing songs, point to pictures and make crafts they’ll learn that they are a part of God’s world and his story.
And these things are all quite easy to build into a creche or playgroup, either every week or regularly. Take some time to think about what your littlies are already learning in your group.
And here are some things to think about when you’re choosing Bible stories:
Small children will be most familiar with narrative story structure.
Younger kids will be keen to listen to what the bigger kids are enjoying, so you want to aim your language at the 4 and 5 year olds. Whereas it’s likely that the big kids will get bored and fidgety if they feel like the stories are too baby-ish.
Your tone is important. You can clue kids into what is going on with your tone as you tell the story, is it exciting, scary, happy, surprising? You can let them know how to react and even what the words mean.
They will always learn something. If the story is trickier, maybe all they’ll learn is that there’s a happy ending, or that Jesus does something. And those are both true things that they’ll learn and have reinforced.
And it would be remiss of me not to mention that it’s not all on you. Do your best to make it appropriate, interesting and understandable for the kids you have, but do also remember that, on your best weeks and your worst, the Holy Spirit is still at work helping them to learn about and love God.
If you’d like some stories with pictures that have been enjoyed by pre-school kids, and craft, toy and song ideas which go with the theme; then do check out the pre-school material on this site. And here are some more tips on setting up your own pre-school playgroup.