Sunday School Quiet Games for 4th-graders

Invisible Ball Toss

• Sit your students down in a circle. Explain to them that you want them to pass an invisible ball around the circle using the following rules: when you tap your right thigh one time, the invisible ball moves to the person next to you on your right. Tapping once on your left thigh throws the ball to the immediate person on your left. If you tap your right thigh twice, it moves to the person two spaces from you on your right. Tell the students that they cannot talk during the game unless they raise their hand to say that the wrong person received the invisible ball. If this turns out to be true, the person who mistook the ball for his at the moment gets sent to the middle of the circle. Once three people sit in the circle, give them a silly punishment like "Do the chicken dance." End the game whenever you like.

What Comes First?

• Prior to the game, write on index cards the titles of as many stories from the Bible as you have students, such as "Noah's Ark," "David and Goliath" and so on. Give each child an index card. Divide the children into two teams and tell them that they have to remain absolutely silent throughout the game. Instruct the children to line themselves up according to the chronology of the stories as they appear in the Bible. When a team feels they have lined themselves up correctly, they call on you to see if they're in the right order. The first team to correctly line themselves up chronologically wins the game.

Biblical Bingo

• Before Sunday school starts, create some bingo cards by making a five-by-five square grid. Come up with 25 trivia questions concerning the Bible appropriate for the age group. Questions like "Where was Jesus born?" or "What did Eve eat in the Garden of Eden?" Write down the answers within the squares of the bingo cards, making sure that the placements of the answers look different with each card. Hand out the bingo cards to the students and give each of them a marker. When you ask the trivia questions, the students must first think of the answer and then find the answer on the Bingo card, placing an "X" over the corresponding square. The first child to get five squares in a row (either horizontally, vertically or diagonally) says "bingo" and wins the game. Play until all of the students get a "bingo."