Teaching Little Ones 1: First Steps

Teaching Little Ones  is a superb Bible-based curriculum for young children in your Sunday School or Kid's Church. The syllabus provides six years worth of material for 3-8 year olds, and contains everything you'll need for one creating and teaching compelling lessons—including lesson plans, story scripts, action rhymes, prayers, activities and craft ideas. You won't have to worry about recurring licence fees or buying workbooks—all the material is available as PDFs, so that you can distribute individual lessons to teachers via email, allowing them to prepare in advance and print off only the sheets they need. Each of the following six modules has 40 lessons:

1. ‘First Steps’ (Transition Crèche; 2 to 3-year-olds)
2. ‘Learning about God’ (Preschool 1; 3 to 4-year-olds)
3. ‘Introducing the Bible’ (Preschool 2; 4 to 5-year-olds)
4. ‘Promises’ (5 to 8-year-olds)
5. ‘Kingship’ (5 to 8-year-olds)
6. ‘Salvation’ (5 to 8-year-olds)

First Steps sample lessons (zip file)

First Steps: Sunday School material for 2–3 year olds

Why a curriculum for 2-3 year olds?

The First Steps syllabus has been written with a particular group of children in mind, a group I have always referred to as ‘transition crèche’—that is, the two to three year olds who are too young to join the traditional Sunday School (which is often restricted to children old enough to be attending pre-school or school during the week), and yet who are getting a bit old for the traditional church créche facility. In the créche they can sometimes make life difficult by being too rough for the babies and bored with the toys. Often parents of children this age will also be pressing the Sunday School supervisor to let their children start Sunday School, because they know their children are ready for some Christian input.

Indeed, what better time to start teaching children than when they are very young? Paul reminds Timothy that he had the privilege of knowing the holy Scriptures ‘from infancy’ (2 Tim 3:14-15).

The First Steps syllabus will not suit every church, and those churches that use it may use it in different ways. For instance some churches may use it for a full year (for 2-3 year olds) while others may decide to use it for just the second half of the year (with the 2-3 year olds). Other churches might use it for a mid-week ladies Bible study crèche or to add some Christian content to a toddlers playgroup.

You may notice some degree of repetition with the early units of Learning about God (the following year’s syllabus). This is intentional, as some churches may decide not to have a ‘transition crèche’ class (First Steps) and may as a result begin with Learning about God. However, the children in those churches which do use First Steps will benefit from the slight repetition in the second year.

So what is the goal of this syllabus? We want to help young children learn about God so that they can develop a relationship with him at their level. In particular, we want to help children of this age to know that God is great, that he made the world around them, and that he loves them. They are also introduced to Jesus in the Christmas story. When teaching this age group, it is always helpful to begin with their world—God made me, my family and friends—and to move from specifics (God made me) to generalities (God made everyone). And so you will see this pattern reflected in the syllabus.

Introduction to the syllabus