Grades 1-3
Introductory Activity—Guess What
Materials: shoebox with a hole cut out of the bottom, various pieces of fruit
Cut a hole out of the bottom of a shoebox. As kids arrive, pick a volunteer to come up and close his eyes. Set the shoebox on its side with the top facing the group and the bottom with the hole cut out facing the volunteer. Place a piece of fruit in the box. With his eyes closed, the volunteer should reach his hand through the hole and touch the fruit just with one hand and guess what that fruit is. Play with a few kids with various pieces of fruit.
Live It Out
Game — Act it Out
Materials: none
Create nine groups of kids. Review the nine fruits of the Spirit and secretly assign one to each group of kids. Give kids five minutes to come up with a skit pantomiming the fruit you gave them. The other groups need to guess what fruit they were portraying. If you don’t have enough kids to create nine groups, create four and give groups multiple fruits.
Craft—Tissue Paper Fruit
Materials: white paper, glue, various colors of tissue paper, black markers
Tell kids print Fruit of the Spirit across the tops of their papers; then they can draw a large piece of fruit on the paper. Kids can then tear pieces of tissue paper of various colors and glue them into their fruit. Since the fruit of the Spirit isn’t literal fruit, tell kids to get creative! After that, kids can write love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control in the blank space on their papers. Remind them that the fruit of the Spirit is all these traits, not just one!
Grades 4–6
Introductory Activity—Musical Chairs
Materials: enough chairs for all the kids but one, fruit of the Spirit song
Find a fruit of the Spirit song online and play a game of musical chairs with that song. After the game is over, see if the last person left can name all the fruit of the Spirit, and tell kids they’ll be learning how the Holy Spirit helps kids grow in their relationship with God!
Live It Out
Game—Spirit Charades
Materials: each fruit of the Spirit written on small pieces of paper, stopwatch or timer
Create two teams of kids, or if you have a small group, just play all together. Assign one kid to come up to the front at pick out a piece of paper. She should pantomime the fruit she drew without using words. Time her for one minute. Her team has twenty seconds to discuss and guess what the fruit is, but they cannot call out more than one guess. If they guess correctly, they get two points. If they guess incorrectly, the other group can guess and will receive one point if correct. Play until you get through all the fruit or as time allows!
Craft—Paper Fruit
Materials: several colors of construction paper, cut into 2-by-9-inch strips; chenille stems; markersDirect kids to gather nine strips of paper. In the middle of each strip, tell them to write a fruit of the Spirit. Kids can stick the bottom of a chenille stem through one end of each strip and fold over the bottom of the chenille stem so that the strips don’t come off. Then kids can take the top of the strips and puncture the chenille stem through the top of the strip. The words should be on the outside. Spread the strips out and move them around until the paper creates a circle around the chenille stem and looks like a piece of fruit. Each kid can twist the end of the chenille stem around his finger, so it looks like a stem of the fruit.
Just wanted to comment on the picture for this week’s Bible story. You have a picture of someone writing in Hebrew. However, Paul wrote in Koine Greek. When this lesson comes around again, you’ll want to correct that in the picture. 🙂
Thank you so much.
Thank you!