Preschool Easter Lesson: God Will Always Love You
Use this simple Easter lesson from Group’s Easy VBS to help preschoolers understand God’s love and forgiveness. (Check out how young children will explore the Gospel message this summer at Scuba VBS!)
Supplies:
Teacher Prep
- Bookmark Luke 22 in your Bible.
- Cut apart each Heart Puzzle and put the pieces in an envelope, making one envelope for every 5 kids. Seal the envelopes.
- Form small groups of about 5 children and one teenage or adult helper. Direct small groups to sit in knee-to-knee circles.
Tear the Heart
Say: Today we’re going to hear a true story about God’s loving forgiveness. Hand each leader an envelope and a paper heart. Instruct them not to open the envelopes yet. Hold up a red paper heart.
Hearts remind us of love. This heart is pretty perfect. It’s clean and doesn’t have any marks on it. We’ll pretend this is like the heart inside each of us—the heart that makes us feel happy and sad.
Tear a piece from the heart, then ask:
- If I said something mean to someone, how would that person feel?
Tear another piece from the heart, then ask:
- If I hit someone or took a toy away, how would that person feel?
Hold up the torn heart and say: That person’s heart would be hurt. They would feel sad, broken, and unloved. Your leaders each have a heart like this. Let’s pass a heart around your group. When you get the heart, tear off a piece of it. As you do that, think of some way you have been hurt and it broke your heart. Maybe someone said something mean to you, or someone hit you, or someone took something from you. When you think of that hurtful thing, tear a piece off the heart.
Have each group pass its heart around and let children tear pieces away and hold the pieces in their laps. When the remainder of the heart comes back to the leaders, have them hold the hearts up so kids can see them.
Can You Fix the Heart?
Ask:
- What’s left of our hearts?
- How can we make this heart look new and perfect again?
Let’s see if you can work together and fix this heart. Have each group try to piece together its heart, like a puzzle, and lay it on the floor in the middle of their group. (It will be very difficult to do.)
After a minute, say: Sometimes we do mean or hurtful things that tear our friendships apart. Those mean things hurt our friendships with people, and with God. But God will never stop loving you—no matter what. God will always love you. Let’s see how God’s love is strong enough to fix broken hearts!
Ask a leader to gather all the broken heart pieces and set them out of sight.
Put the Puzzle Together
Open your Bible to Luke 22.
Say: Our true Bible story is sort of a puzzle with some pieces that need to fit into place.
Ask leaders to open their envelopes and give a puzzle piece to each person in the group.
Have the child holding the piece with the mad face on it set that piece in the middle of the knee-to-knee circle.
Say: Jesus is God’s Son. He taught people about God’s love. Jesus showed God’s love and power by healing sick people and helping sad people. That made some people happy, but it made other people mad. They didn’t believe Jesus was God’s Son. Those people told guards to come and take Jesus away.
Have the child holding the puzzle piece with the picture on the cross on it set the piece in the middle of the circle.
Soldiers nailed Jesus to a cross like this one. That hurt Jesus. It broke his heart. He hung on the cross until he died. He died to fix our broken hearts and to show God’s love for us.
Ask for the puzzle piece that shows the picture of the person crying. Have each preschooler set that piece in the middle of their circle.
This was a sad, sad day for Jesus’ friends. Their friend Jesus died.
Ask for the puzzle piece with the picture of the tomb on it. Have the preschooler set that piece in the middle of their circle.
Jesus’ friends took his body and set it in a tomb—like a big cave. They rolled a giant rock over the opening of the cave so no one could touch Jesus’ body.
Ask for the puzzle piece with the number 3 on it. Have the child set that piece in the middle of the circle.
Jesus Heals Our Broken Hearts
Say: After three days, Jesus’ friends came to visit the tomb. Lead children in slowly counting to three. But they were in for a surprise!
Have the person holding the puzzle piece with Jesus on it set that piece in the middle of the circle.
Jesus was alive! He was stronger than death. Jesus came to life and saw his friends. He died and came back to life to show us God’s big, big love for us!
Let small groups work together to put their pieces together to make a heart. Then draw attention back to yourself.
Just as you put the heart puzzle together, Jesus can put our broken hearts back together. That means he can take away our sadness and the bad things we’ve done. God loves you so much, that nothing you can do will keep him from loving you. God even gave us his Son, Jesus, because God will always love you.
Pray: Dear God, thank you for loving us enough to send Jesus. Thank you for allowing Jesus to die, come back to life, take away our wrongs, and show us how much you love us. We love you, too. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Wrap up your Easter lesson with this “egg-stra” special game designed just for preschoolers! For more easy ways to bring the Bible to life for little ones, check out The Humongous Book of Preschool Ideas.
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