The moment I started to think of boy Jesus at the temple activities this idea came to my mind for this Bible lesson. It’s a twist on a game I did for Joshua and the Battle of Jericho, only now I have nice official Bible buildings to use.

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Find Jesus at the temple game supplies
either Bible finger puppets, or as I’m using in the post a mini peg doll, the Bible finger puppets don’t have any children figures sadly.
Bible buildings, you can either buy an entire set of Bible buildings, OR if you get the Jesus at the temple unit, or bundle, you get a small subset of the buildings.
Set up for the game
Set up your buildings as a nice little town. To make it not supremely obvious where Jesus is, you may put Him under a different building than the temple building.
I know, that’s not where He was in the Bible story, but if we go with the obvious answer, it’ll be way too easy to win the game.
An alternate version of Finding Boy Jesus at the temple game

As I’m sitting here writing this post, I thought, you know what could be fun? Turn it into a relay game.
I’m thinking you have 3 different Jesus figures, this is really easy if you have peg dolls, you just color coordinate them: blue, yellow, green, something like that.
I’d print off a larger town, and maybe even have a few false alarms.
Playing the game for a small group or preschoolers

Now the best way to play this with younger kids is with a small group, and they take turns closing their eyes as another person hides Jesus. Then they get to excitedly open their eyes and start looking under buildings until they find it.
Of course preschoolers will be grabbing a Mary and Joseph figure and have a lot of fun going from building to building to find Jesus.
That’s certainly how it’s happened in my house when my kids were little.
I kinda miss them being little.
Only for a couple of minutes, and then I remember how awesome my teens are.
But, how do I make it into a relay race?

I’d line up my teams at the other side of the room, and set up the village on the other end. As I set it up, I’d start stuffing Bible figures under each building.
Then just like any other relay race, one person from each team will run over at a time.
When they arrive to the village, they can look under one building, and only one building. After that, they run back and their teammates hopefully saw where they looked to find their team’s boy Jesus.
Yes, it’s like a memory game.
Oh man, I just thought of another idea! I need to add that into my boy Jesus at the Temple unit, take that minibook and or the board game and turn it into a memory game.
Excuse me, for a moment I need to go write that down.
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