When you teach your preschoolers the Bible, how do you plan which Bible story or topic to teach?
At this age level, I have seen a variety of materials but I have never seen anything like the outline from my mom that I’ll share in this post!
To me, her outline solves a couple of minor predicaments that I’ve considered in the past…
I like to teach somewhat chronologically. BUT, if I start in the Old Testament and go all the way through it until I reach the Christmas story, then it’s a loonnnnng time for a preschooler (who really doesn’t remember as much of the whole Bible due to their young age and lack of years for memory to build) until they hear much about Jesus!
But if I start in the New Testament with the life of Christ on earth, then how do I transition back to begin at Creation for when I’d like to go through the events leading up to Christ?
And how can I include the main themes of Christian living which we read in the epistles?
Table of Contents
The Typical Outlines
Here are some of the general options I’ve seen before:
1. Start at Creation and go chronologically through the entire Bible.
First, read the entire Old Testament, then the New Testament.
This is a great method for older children or adults but it can seem long for the preschoolers unless the passages are not taught in detail. Some parents would “skip over” some of the longer stories, while others read every verse even if a child does not understand the words yet (e.g. to help a child get used to hearing what the Bible sounds like).
Some people use a children’s Bible storybook for family devotions while other parents would use a children’s Bible storybook only to supplement family devotions. (And other families don’t use this kind of resource at all.) We recommend using an accurate translation for a real, full Bible for family devotions but occasionally we personally would supplement that with reading from a storybook, especially for the littles. (If you’re wondering about choosing a good Bible to read from, there is a chart on this page on our website with a few links for places.)
- You can see what we put on the list of children’s books which teach Bible stories or lessons within our list of titles on the webpage called, Character-Building Titles for Children. You might look for the keywords there for “Bible”, “Theo”, “Ham”, “LeBar”, and “Rabens”.
2. Use the theme-based study, such as the character of God.
Some parents might just pick and choose a variety of stories along a theme such as the character of God (e.g. love, protection, justice, sovereignty, etc.).
I find this approach is quite good with preschoolers! An outline to learn about the character of God (God is Holy, God is Love, etc.) was added to “Designing a Home Preschool for 2s and 3s”, available on this page of free planning guides.
But, if you also have older children who would like a more chronological style and are teaching them together with the littles, a whole year of picking and choosing can feel somewhat scattered.
3. Use topical studies.
Using topical studies can be good for a multi-grade discussion. For example, how to best use our tongue or about various proverbs or current issues being already discussed in your family (e.g. wise or foolish ways to live).
But topical Bible studies are not as helpful if you have young children who prefer a story to think or even draw about rather than a topical discussion.
It tends to be easier for them to draw Bible stories (narratives) in comparison to ideas/concepts/doctrines which might instead have abstract thinking or symbols in the explanation.
Extra Ideas and Resources –
Since a child’s language is often quite visual, using objects or pictures can really help to explain lessons to them.
I have made a colouring book of lessons which has drawings for young children to colour as they learn about some good attitudes and actions – that reproducible resource is called “Be Willing”. Another resource we offer especially for the children who are able to read, colour, cut, and paste, is called “Christian Character Education Teaching Posters and Notes”. It was designed for primary-age children. (One reason both of these printable titles were developed is because topical studies with appealing visuals for young children seemed to be quite hard to find and we didn’t want to draw out stick-figures or play with connecting blocks or always just talk about these topics.
Once I also used a set of Bible verses for our children to pick from to draw. Then we could hang these up on an indoor clothesline to be reminded of what was being learned that week.
Simple crafts can be useful to include if you’re doing a topical study with young children. One of my children loved making a pair of paper “listening ears” (paper ears attached to a paper strip headband) in Sunday School. It helped to remind him to listen and obey in a fun way!
Christian Light Publishers offer a few reproducible easy paper craft books for young children and the pages in those resources are often topical-based.
For topical studies, sometimes object lessons (or a puppet or toy) for younger children can help the lessons be understood easier, instead of not having any visual or memorable experience to include in the discussion.
There are various object lesson books or puppet scripts which can be a good reference tool for parents, not just Sunday School teachers. Here are a few titles which can be useful for teaching preschoolers:
- CBH Puppet Tracks and Scripts | Peppermint Stick Learning Company
- Dartboard Set (an object lesson mentioned on that page)
- Puppet Animals Tell Bible Stories (Marie M. Chapman, Accent Publications, Inc., Colorado) – out-of-print
- Puppet Plays: Adventures of Charlie and His Friends (Violet Hodson, Standard Publishing, Ohio) – out-of-print
- Fold ‘n’ Cut Bible Truth Talks (Arnold Carl Westphal, collections of lessons reissued by Arvin Scott Devers, originally published by Visual Evangels Publishers, USA)
- Science and the Bible (Donald B. Deyoung, Baker Book House, Michigan) – There are three volumes. The title is linked with our affiliate link to one of them.
4. Start at Creation and go chronologically through the Old Testament until the end of Moses or David and then skip over to the New Testament.
This sequence would ignore the other Old Testament lessons until “sometime later”. And it might only include some parts of the New Testament before repeating the same sections of the Old Testament again.
This can be OK sometimes, especially for young children; but if the family continues only following this as an outline, the children could grow up not knowing much about the other part of the Bible that doesn’t have the familiar Bible stories in it.
5. Each parent leads in either the Old or the New Testament.
An example of this would be learning Old Testament stories in the morning with “mom leading” and New Testament in the evening with “dad leading” – simultaneously following along two timelines so-to-speak.
The above outlines ALL have good things about them! And the below outline is just another outline other than, it could be an outline that you’ve never considered before and I think it is a very good one to share with you!
Grace’s Outline
As I was helping my mom (Grace) to pack her things for moving one spring, I came across a book of drawings and verses that my older sister had completed many years ago. To me, the outline of lessons stood out as quite unique so I asked my mom if she could remember whether or not this was an outline she had made up herself or if it had come from another curriculum. She was pretty sure it was one of her ideas this time. (She often did develop her own curriculum but if you have seen this elsewhere, we do apologize if it was a borrowed idea instead. Either way, I think it is excellent!)
Grace’s Order of Lessons in General:
Begin at Creation and go through Genesis to Exodus 20 – the Ten Commandments – which is a basic set of laws teaching about sin. You might recall that God’s Word teaches us that the law is useful to bring us the knowledge that we cannot live up to God’s standards by ourselves (Galatians 3:24).
Then flip to the New Testament for the Christmas Story in-depth. Use Isaiah 9:6 to teach about the character of Jesus and then John chapter 3 in-depth to teach about Jesus as our Saviour.
In John 3, Moses is mentioned so after John 3’s lesson(s)…and this is part of the uniqueness of her outline that I love…
Go back to continue the stories of the Old Testament beginning with that same story of Moses mentioned by Jesus in John 3! A smooth transition for sure!
And now, in a brief period of time, you have also taught about Creation, Noah, who the Israelites are, what sin is, Who Jesus is and why He came. Yes, all these lessons for children who are just beginning to learn from the Bible!!!
But here is the other part that is unique which I love about her outline…
When she goes back to begin chronologically from Moses onwards, she NOW begins to double-up concepts so-to-speak – relating the person and work of Christ in with these Old Testament stories! (And occasionally also bringing in parts of the epistles too.)
By the time she has completed the Old Testament in this way, it is easy to see how the next blank book can be filled with your child’s drawings about the stories of Jesus – His miracles, parables, etc. and of the early Church.
Things just flow together quite nicely I think, both for the preschool age AND the older siblings!
How to Use Grace’s Outline
Use a blank notebook so that the child can draw pictures about each Bible lesson in it. The parent can print the Bible verse (and/or the phrase or word list or hymn excerpt) on those pages as well.
Self-pace this study. Each lesson listed below has whatever was written on the page(s) for the lesson. (Sometimes it looked like more than one day might have been done for one section of Scripture.)
This outline was developed for Grace’s family using KJV and older hymns but can easily be adapted with any similar Bible version and songs you know.
(In your desired order…)
- Pray with your child(ren).
- Read the Scripture.
- Sing a short song if you like. (Some parents would include music to help teach children the stories or other truths of Scripture. This is a great idea although I’ll only briefly mentioning it.)
- Then instruct your child to draw a picture about today’s lesson. (Colouring is optional. Tracing any words is optional.)
(Note: Grace often wrote only a part of the verse, to keep the meaning simple for tiny tots to remember.)
Click here or below to download Grace’s Bible Study Outline for Tiny Tots!
