Best Bible Lessons for 4-Year-Olds

Do you remember being four years old? At this age, the world is an exciting place full of new things to discover, and the number one thing on your mind is probably playing. This exciting age is the perfect time to begin introducing your child to the Bible. While they might not be able to read it for themselves yet, there is still much for them to gain through the incredible stories it contains. What are the best Bible lessons for four-year-olds?

The best Bible lessons for four-year-olds are the ones that promote an engaged and active learning experience. Studies show that one of the most effective ways for children to learn is through playing. By taking a playful approach to your 4-year-olds Christian education, you’ll be able to help them learn simple yet powerful Biblical truths that can benefit them for a lifetime. 

If you’re ready to start teaching your little one about the Bible, but you’re not sure where to start, we invite you to check out our Bible Blast Bible Curriculum that is perfect for four-year-olds! It takes you step-by-step through the incredible stories in the Bible and gives you the perfect guideline for teaching children at home or in a classroom setting. You can learn more about our 4-year-old Bible lesson curriculum here.

Teaching Bible Lessons to Four-Year-Olds

I’ve you don’t have much experience teaching four-year-olds Bible lessons, doing so can seem daunting. However, you’ll be happy to know the process isn’t as complicated as you might think! Here are a few of our best tips for successfully teaching four-year-olds lessons from the Bible.

Make the Learning Process Fun

One of the biggest mistakes you can make when teaching four-year-olds is neglecting to make the process fun and engaging. At 4 years old, children have a far more difficult time paying attention for long periods of time. If you try to give a 4-year-old an hour-long lecture, you’ll quickly discover this! The key to teaching four-year-olds Bible lessons is to make it exciting.

If you’re not used to keeping children entertained and engaged, you might be drawing a blank when it comes to how exactly you do this! But not to worry, here are a few tried and true methods for engaging four-year-olds and teaching them some life-changing Biblical truth at the same time:

Play Games  

When it comes to teaching a 4-year-old that loves playing, what better way to teach them than by playing games? There are literally hundreds of Bible games you can play with your four-year-old to help them remember or reinforce a spiritual truth that you want them to learn. Don’t believe us? Here is a list of 101 great Bible games for kids. Children love playing games, so combining the Bible with a fun game is the perfect way to teach 4-year-olds or other young children who might have a difficult time focusing otherwise.

We recommend finding at least 5 or 6 fun Bible games that you can always have ready to play if it seems like the children you’re teaching are becoming restless. After you’ve played a game and burned some of their energy, they are far more likely to sit still for a few minutes as you finish up your lesson.

Sing Songs 

If you’re looking for an easy way to teach young children, one of the ways that we’ve found is most effective is through song! Not only do 4-year-olds enjoy singing, but it’s also a highly effective way to help them memorize scripture. And the great thing about learning the scripture through song is that those catchy tunes can stick with you for the rest of your life!

If you grew up attending Sunday school, there may even be a few Bible songs that you still remember from your childhood. At the young age of 4, it can be very difficult to learn if the teaching method doesn’t help you stay engaged. As you plan your 4-year-old Bible lessons, find a few scripture songs that you want to learn with them. Some of the most popular verses to learn by song are Psalm 23, Psalm 91, and the Great Commission. You can also use a song to help children memorize all of the books of the Bible.

Incorporate Toys into the Learning Process

Whether you consider yourself creative or not, one thing is certain. All children possess incredible creative gifts! Children are naturals at coming up with unique stories and ideas that adults might never come up with. One fantastic method of teaching children the Bible is to pair it with some type of creative project. At four years old, children are finally old enough to play with legos without consuming them.

Why not have them recreate popular scenes from the Bible using legos or wooden blocks? Other fun projects to do with 4 year-olds is anything that allows them to use crayons. You could have them draw a picture of what they image Jesus or Heaven look like, or you could give them each a page from a Bible coloring book that corresponds with the lesson that you’re teaching for the day.

Use Prizes

4-year-olds might not be fully developed yet, but they certainly understand the concept of prizes! Being rewarded for hard work with a prize is a great way to motivate young students to stay focused and do their best. Churches all around the world have caught onto this and started “Bible Buck” programs to encourage kids in their spiritual walks.

If you’re unfamiliar with this type of system, they usually work by providing kids a certain amount of Bible Bucks when they complete specific tasks. One of those tasks might simply be attendance, while others could be reciting a scripture verse from memory, or completing some other type of Bible-focused homework.

Once or twice a month, they might open a Bible Buck store where the children get to spend their bucks on prizes. Not only do kids learn about the scripture throughout the process, but they might also begin to grasp the concept of budgeting and managing your finances.

Ask for Movement

Four-year-olds, like most children, are wiggle worms! They can sit still for only so long before they need to move. As you plan out your Bible lessons for them, try to think strategically about when and how you can get them to engage physically in the lessons.

This could be by means of a game, or you could also simply get them to engage by having the stand-up and repeat a motion that corresponds with the lesson you’re teaching. To simplify things even further, you might just consider having them all raise their hands in response to questions throughout the lesson. However you go about it, the important thing is to help children at this unique age stay focused to the best of their abilities while having a good time in the process.

Have a Quiz at the End of Reading

Another great tool for engaging a classroom of four-year-olds is a short pop-quiz at the end of each lesson. You can allude that the quiz is coming all throughout the lesson when you sense that focus is starting to wander, and allude to a prize for whoever does the best on the questions.

Short quizzes at the end of lessons are also a great way to quickly recap the key points of the lesson that you taught for the day, thus increasing the likelihood that the children will remember it over the coming weeks and months. If you’re not sure what types of questions to ask, many kids Bible lesson curriculums come with them pre-preprepared for you so that all you have to do is read them allowed to the children.

Allow Time for Social Interaction 

If you’re teaching Bible lessons to more than one 4-year-old, another way you can help them learn is by allowing them to interact with each other to think about what they’re learning and how it applies to their lives. Easy ways to encourage this are to assign small projects that require them to team up in pairs and allowing a few minutes before and after each lesson for them to talk about something relating to the lesson for that day.

Use Experiential Learning Techniques

It’s been proven that we learn far more from experiencing things ourselves than simply listening. This is a fantastic thing to remember as you go about teaching the Bible. Look for opportunities that allow you to give your class an experience.

If you’re teaching about a verse that talks about honey, maybe allow your everyone in your class to taste a drop of honey as you read it. However, if you want to bring food into the classroom, it’s important you check with parents about allergies beforehand. Thank you for reading these tips for teaching Bible lessons to four-year-olds! We wish you all the best as you go about teaching this fun age about the Word of God. If you’d like a fun and easy curriculum to follow as you teach your students, we’d like to invite you to give Bible Blast a try! You can download a free sample of one of the lessons here, or you can go here to learn more about Bible Blast.