Bible Story Bags

Continuing my trend of looking around at different ideas and ways to teach Bible lessons, I’ve long been intrigued by Bible story bags. Ever since I visited a friend’s church and they had small bags you could take home for your preschool or early elementary-aged kid to continue learning about the Bible for the week. It’s a cool concept that I’m toying with, so I did some googling and found a fun variety of Bible take-home bags (mainly from a few specific blogs). But, here are about 10 Bible story bag ideas to get you thinking of your own.

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What are Bible story bags?

Bible story bags are designed for non-reading kids to keep learning about the Bible when they leave church.

Most I’ve seen included a Bible picture book. To continue a specific story or theme it always helps to have a story to read.

Depending on the style of Bible story bag, they go one of two ways. The first is an easy-to-make craft you can put together at home with your kids. Part of me likes this idea because it gets those messy learners. Another part of me is hesitant because you have to check those bags every now and then to make sure you still have all of the pieces for the crafts. You also have the problem of deciding if you want to include the messy stuff (that may or may not be at the house) like glue.

But, the style of Bible story bags I really like are ones designed to play with the story. Maybe there are props so you can act out the story in the bag, or maybe there are toys for each part of the story so you can retell the story with toys.

Craft based Bible story bag ideas

Since I don’t have permission to share pictures, you’ll have to click through to each of these take home bags to see just what they’re like, but it’s going to get you started.

• Take Out Church– This bag is based on having a “church on vacation” and it has so many fun ideas, side note you’ll see this time several times in this post.
• Pray at Home Bags– I might take some of these ideas and turn them into a prayer stations at church.

Play based Bible story bag ideas

From my quick searching, this seems to be the more popular style, like I said, I think it’s because it’s a set up and done.

• Jesus calms the storm take home bag– This has multiple ways to recreate the story and I love the different sensory options.
• Creation Story bag– Lots of different ways to play with the story.
• Joseph in Egypt– A long post, but if you scroll down about halfway, she’s got a craft that the kids make they can then take home to act out the story. So this one serves double purpose.
• The Way of Light– This is another concept based take home bag, and it’s got so many different activities and ways to interact with the idea
• Good Samaritan take home bag– I love the simple face puppets they’ve made for these bags.
• Lost sheep story bag– We did something similar to this bag when we studied the parable of the Lost Sheep.
• Prodigal Son take home bag– Again lots of toys to play with this story.
• Old Testament Bible story bags– Several different stories, I’m noticing lots of acting it out with felt creations.

Funny thing about this post

Okay, y’all don’t care about this, but this is where my education background changes how I refer to things. I’m used to thinking of this concept as take home bags, so I was looking up “Bible take home bags” and just wasn’t finding all that many, and then I saw them being referred to as Bible story bags over and over again. I was almost done writing my post, and didn’t have the 10 ideas I wanted, so on a whim I looked up Bible story bags, and you know what? I just found over a dozen new ideas that I’m heading off to check out. I’m going to keep this to 10 Bible story bag ideas, but if you want to see the other ideas I found then you need to follow me on Pinterest because I’ve got them all saved there.

Great supplies for a Bible story bag ideas

Here are common elements I’ve noticed among all of these Bible story bag ideas:

• bag– If you’re making lots of bags, you want sturdy and inexpensive bags. I could also easily see re-using all those reusable grocery bags we’ve got stashed in our drawers somewhere
• Felt or this stiffer felt– To create fun props for making flannel board stories.
• Stick puppets– To make puppets for acting out stories, if you want different sizes and genders get this pack.
• Fact stick pack– Again for acting out stories.
• Stuffed animals– There are so many Bible stories with animals, so having some stuffed animals is a great plan.
• Bible finger puppets– These are Easter finger puppets, and they’re super cute. I like these cute cloth Nativity finger puppets, but for the cost the plastic ones are better.
• Cloth animal finger puppets– Again, I like small and cute things. Oh, this one is cute too.
• Play dough– Great for molding and buliding the story.
• Duplo or Building blocks– There are several stories that can use building materials.

Some ideas that will easily be added to my upcoming Bible story bags

• Creation Rummy Printable Card Game
• Creation Story bean bags
• Books of the Bible Go Fish!
• Jonah milk carton craft
• Noah’s ark milk carton craft

My goal was to get this post out on Wednesday, and it is still Wendesday for 59 more minutes.