Kids and teachers alike are having a hard time making kids focus on their schoolwork. Can you imagine how much harder teaching them about religion and faith will be? They are so consumed with social media, the internet, and video games that they don’t have time and energy to learn more important things. But if there’s one thing that the coronavirus pandemic has all given us, it’s time. Parents have more time now with their kids as they work from home, and kids have no choice but to deal with their parents since they don’t have their friends and school activities with them.
Many parents don’t realize that there are fun ways to teach kids about faith and religion. It’s not just about reading stories from the scriptures, though those are fun, too. It’s about making the lessons interactive and intuitive. Learning about faith and religion should be exciting. Who said this needs to be boring?
Storytelling Time
Younger kids may have the patience to listen to your animated stories from the scriptures before sleeping, but this technique does not work for older kids with unspent energy. For them, you have to be more creative in sharing with them stories about the scriptures. You can look for movies, documentaries, cartoons, and photos that will bring these stories to life.
Have you ever tried projecting images on the wall while you’re telling the story? That might make your kids sit up and pay attention. Another thing you can do is find an audiobook. Voice actors are better at storytelling than you.
Subscription Boxes
Look for subscription boxes from your church. You will be surprised how creative your church can be when it comes to surprising you with great items in your subscription box. If your kids are getting bored with the usual things they receive, you can let them check out your monthly subscription craft box. Maybe the grown-up stuff will interest them more than what’s inside their boxes.
The best thing about these subscription boxes is that there’s something new the kids can look forward to every month. They will want to wait around the mailbox for their own boxes and maybe even their parents’ boxes. This will create excitement around the idea of learning about their faith.
Trivia Night
Instead of playing charades with the family every night, why not turn that into a trivia game night instead about characters in the scriptures? Every time someone guesses the character right, that person gets extra points if they can tell a story about that character. This way, everyone is learning about the characters in the scriptures and testing their memories, too.
Craft Time
Kids always love craft time. This means they get to work with colors, paints, and other art supplies. They can even make glittery postcards if that’s what they want. What kind of crafts should you do? It can be anything from making a manger in your front yard to finding images on the internet that you can print and turn into a postcard.
You can also use this time to teach your kids to write a sweet letter to their grandparents. They can use the postcards they made. If you and your kids are not that great at drawing images, you can print them from the internet. You can also do calligraphy with your kids, so you can create wonderful framed scripture quotes you can hang in your house.
Role Play
Is there anything role-playing can’t do? Yes, it can also teach about faith and religion. Involve everyone in the role-play. Since they have to learn about their characters, they will need to read stories about them. This will teach them to appreciate the characters that they play. The kids will also better understand the stories from the scriptures since they are acting these scenes out.
Once the pandemic is over, you can organize an event in the community. The kids can produce a play based on the scripture stories that they learned. This is a fun way for them to interact with their community.
Religion and faith are tricky subjects to discuss. However, given the right motivation, kids will absorb the information you share with them. Making the learning more fun should be your goal since kids gain better knowledge of a topic from play and games. There is no excuse for parents not to teach their kids about stories from the scriptures since there are many ways this can be done in an entertaining way.
