You can teach young children the story of Cain and Abel by helping them create puppets of the brothers. Later, they can act out the story with their puppets during semi-structured play. For simple puppets, provide toilet paper rolls and pieces of paper decorated to resemble the brothers' heads and arms. For the main body, have students cover the rolls with solid construction paper. Then, they can color in the faces and the arms, coloring the sleeves to match the color of the clothing on the torso. To better identify each brother, add an image of a sheep to the Abel puppet and put a pitchfork in Cain's hand.
To remember the sacrifice that Abel made of his finest sheep, have your students create fluffy sheep out of paper and cotton balls. Depending on the children's ability level, you may draw the sheep for them or have them draw their own. Using white glue, they should then cover their sheep with the cotton balls. They can use crayons to color the sheep's heads and feet. For an added touch, you can provide the students with short lengths of colorful ribbon and tiny decorative bells. Let each student tie a ribbon and a bell around a sheep's neck.
Lead in to the activity by asking your students what jobs Cain and Abel had. Have all the students brainstorm other examples of jobs that are mentioned in the Bible. On the theme of different occupations, have members of the community, such as students' parents, come in and speak about their jobs. To close the activity, have students return to their lists of the jobs mentioned in the Bible. As a writing activity, let the students work independently to write descriptions of what they imagine each of the jobs entailed.
For older children, have the class work together to re-create a modernized version of the Cain and Abel story. Instead of being a shepherd and a farmer, let the students imagine different jobs for the brothers. They can even give them more contemporary names. Depending on the class size, either have the entire class work collectively or break them into a few small groups.