Sunday School Review Ideas

This post was originally posted May 2018, but is very applicable to our SS reviews each month. 

We are four lessons into our Sunday School year. Most Sunday School’s review lessons every few weeks so we will use the opportunity to post some review games.  We have compiled a list of games and activities that can be used by Sunday School teachers or parents, to review lessons in a fun way.  Some of the ideas could even be used at the end of a Sunday School session at a Bible School, to review what you have done for the day.

Generic Game Board

• A simple game board with squares numbered 1-100 or 1-50 (similar to snakes and ladders).
• Use rocks, coins, buttons or any game pieces.
• The students get to answer a question in turn from the question pile and if they get the correct answer, they roll the dice. If you didn’t want to put question cards together, you could just read out questions at the start of each child’s turn.
• You could have bonus cards for certain squares (ie. Paul is imprisoned – miss a turn, Nehemiah builds the walls of Jerusalem – move ahead 2 spaces).

Pictionary

• Write the names of people, objects and places from the lessons on pieces of paper.
• Have one student at a time pick a card. The student will try and draw the word on the chalkboard/whiteboard, while other students guess what it is.
• You can divide the class into teams, or simply award points to the first student to guess.
• Another option is for the teacher to do the drawing and the students guess.

Musical Review

• Write review questions on cards and put them into a bag.
• Pass the bag around the room while singing a song, or playing a recording of a song.
• When you stop singing or the music stops, the child with the bag pulls out a question. If he or she can answer it, they keep it. If not, it goes back in the bag.

Whiteboard Fun

• Give each child a small whiteboard (you can buy them at most dollar stores) and two cups. One is filled with small candies (ie. M&Ms, skittles etc) and the second cup is empty.
• Ask a question and the students have to write or draw the answer on the board without talking. On the count of three, reveal the answers to everyone.
• If the students get it right, they can move a candy from one cup to the other.  If students say the answer, cheat etc, they lose a candy!
• At the end of the game, the students can take the candies home in the second cup.
• This review activity works well for older children who can read and write.
• Alternative – you could use paper if you do not have access to whiteboards, but whiteboards do add that extra element of “fun”!!  Kids love to draw on whiteboards.

Tic Tac Toe (Noughts and Crosses)

• Have at least twenty review questions written out.
• Break the class into sets of two … Xs and Os.
• Read a question for the Xs. Whoever answers correctly places his or her X on the grid. If the student does not answer correctly, no X is placed.  Then read a question for the Os, and so on.

Pass the Parcel

• Wrap a small gift/prize in several layers of newspaper.
• Students sit in a circle and begin to pass the parcel around the circle quickly while the music is playing.
• When the music stops, the student with the parcel in their hands mRemove featured imageust answer a review question.
• If they get it correct, they get to take off one layer of newspaper.
• The music starts again and the students once again pass the parcel.
• Repeat until the final layer of the newspaper is taken off and the child who takes it off gets to keep the prize if they answer the question correctly.
• Alternative – write the questions on a piece of paper and stick it to each layer of paper.

Dress Up / Acting Out the Lesson

• Have a box of dress-up clothes and items that relate to the lessons you are revising.
• Split the class into teams.
• Have a number of lessons to act out written on pieces of paper and put them in a bag.
• Teams take it in turn to choose a piece of paper out of the bag and act out what is written on the paper.
• The other teams have to guess what is being acted out.

Over the coming months, on reviews weeks we hope to post other review games, plays and songs relating to stage 1 of CSSA.