Samson so much potential Bible Old Testament Judges histories

Samson activities for kids

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by

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For whatever reason whenever I read the story of Samson I always picture him as being a surfer dude, or maybe a jock.  Thereโ€™s just something about his โ€œIโ€™m too cool for the rulesโ€ attitude that always makes me think jock.  I guess thatโ€™s why my Samson activities reflect the jock aspect, but it works really well for a Sunday School class full of wiggly boys.

Samson strong man of God

Because letโ€™s face it a lot of the other possibilities wouldnโ€™t be kid friendlyโ€ฆ..

The last lesson we learned about Gideon, the reluctant judge.

Samson activities for kids

We started off making a Samson wig, I was going to take pictures of how it was made, and after about step 2, I forgot to take pictures, so instead you get a couple of cute pictures of my kids making it, and then lots of goofing off.

making our Samson wigs

Thatโ€™s about what I got for that, but I got some great pictures of them in the wigs.

Samson wig

Isnโ€™t that picture awesome?  Her face after we did this Samson activity was great.

After that, we went on to show how strong we were with strong man Samson activities

Samson strong man activities

We tried different endurance things running, holding our arms up, and staying in a few yoga positions a long time, and my wiggly worms didnโ€™t do too well because they didnโ€™t stay still and thus forfeited their turn.  It was rather funny to watch.

Samson activity for kids

The Samson activity I thought was most hilarious was watching the kids race โ€œholding the city gates,โ€ at one point Samson escapes by tearing the city gates out and then carrying them for a good long distance.  It just cracked me up to see them running as fast and as hard as they could while wearing their wigs and carrying those giant pillows.

The kids thought it was fun too judging from their grins.

Samson craft

Hi! Future Ticia 2024 here, I just taught this again on Mother’s Day, and I used a Samson craft from Crafting the Word of God, and wanted to update to include a link there. Once I’ve uploaded the pictures, I’ll add that in.

My thoughts on Samson

I tried for a bit to put my thoughts together on Samson, and the big thing that keeps coming to my mind: what a waste.  He had so many gifts, and so many talents, but he didnโ€™t use them wisely.  Instead, he used them for revenge, and to amuse himself, and it makes me sad, so very very sad.  I donโ€™t want to be the person who wastes my gifts.

I had some other thoughts on Samsonโ€™s parents, but I wrote on that before over at the Homeschool Village, so if youโ€™re looking for some hope on parenting, I strongly recommend reading it.

As always click on the picture below to get your copy of the full lesson, and storybook.

Samson lesson for kids

More Samson activities and materials

And that finishes off the “kid appropriate Judges,” so now we head on to Ruth, the great-grandmother of David. Or see the whole unit of Joshua, Judges, and Ruth.

Samson Unit



Comments

15 responses to “Samson activities for kids”

  1. I am so with you on Samson not being the most kid-friendly story from the Bible ๐Ÿ™‚ I love the physical activities you came up with.

    1. It always amuses me at some of the stories in children’s Bible, and when you read them in the actual Bible it’s not at all age appropriate. There’s a lot of white washing for Samson in those picture Bibles.

  2. Cute wigs!!! However, I notice that your picture isn’t included in the wigs like it was on instagram ๐Ÿ˜‰ I love the running with the cit gates to cute! Good job making this relate-able for kids!

    1. Yeah….. I hadn’t downloaded the pictures from the phones yet, so I didn’t have that one or another cute one I’d taken on my phone ๐Ÿ™‚

    2. That use to be a problem for me all the time too. If you are looking for an easy solution I can give you one ๐Ÿ™‚ You can create a dropbox account and install the software on both your compute and your phone. Then you can set your camera folder to be synced automatically. Then when you are connected to wifi it will upload all of the pictures to dropbox and download them to your computer. ๐Ÿ™‚ I can give you more details if you want/need!

  3. Samson a jock huh…hmm I never really thought about it that way but now I can’t help but do and it makes me smile. Great activities and love the kids faces running around with city stones on their heads:)

    1. He just always seemed like a jock to me, though not a dumb jock like I tend to assume, because he’s actually pretty smart, he just acts dumb.

  4. It looks like your kids had a blast with this!

    1. Oh my goodness yes!

  5. Well, I’m glad to see you didn’t tie any of the neighborhood dogs’ tails together to set on fire ๐Ÿ™‚ But, the city gate race idea is fantastic.

    1. Yeah, that would have been a bit overboard.

      The city gate race was incredibly popular, now I’m trying to think how to best use that with my Sunday School.

  6. Great ideas for making learning about Samson fun!

    As for your closing thoughts, I thought I might put my two cents in. I agree that Samson wasted his gifts and even took them for granted. He became so prideful that he began to think that his strength was from himself and not from God. You can see this after he tells Delilah the truth of where his strength came from and then his thoughts upon waking up the next morning are that he will just go ahead and break free of the trap that she sets for him again. Clearly he didn’t really believe that his strength was from God anymore, but began to believe it was of himself. So he didn’t even really think that he would lose his strength after she cut his hair.

    However, I think the takeaway from Samson’s story is to show us that God can use anybody, no matter how flawed and how many mistakes they make, for HIS purposes. God wanted to destroy the Philistines. And because of the mistakes that Samson made along the way, it set him up to be in just the place that God wanted him to be — under those pillars with all the kings and nobles there that God wanted to see destroyed.

    That moment where Samson prayed also shows us that if we turn our hearts back to God’s purpose for our lives he will bless us with all the gifts that He has planned for us — just like He restored Samson’s strength because Samson’s plans finally came in line with God’s plans.

    So despite ourselves and despite the bad choices that we are bound to make in our lives — God can still use us for BIG things — KINGDOM Things! I think that’s a good lesson for kids. ๐Ÿ™‚

    1. You’re right, it is also a great example of God using someone messed up to advance His kingdom.

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