Preschool Activities for the Our Father Prayer

Prayer Necklace

• Use colored beads to make a visual reminder of the Our Father prayer for preschoolers to take home and to demonstrate the meaning of the words as you recite the prayer together. Provide a long piece of yarn or thick string and colored beads with large holes, with one gold, purple, green, bred, orange, blue and black bead per child. Help preschoolers make a knot at one end of the string and add one bead for each line of the prayer with gold representing heaven, purple the Kingdom, green the earth, orange our food, black our sins, white for forgiveness, red for temptation and blue for the Kingdom, Power and Glory.

Prayer Pretzels

• Preschoolers will be delighted to hear that they are going to make a snack that reminds them of the importance of prayer, especially the Our Father prayer. Pretzels originally were made by monks with their shape representing praying hands. Provide thawed store-bought or homemade pretzel dough and help preschoolers roll out long "snakes" before crossing and twisting the ends to form a standard pretzel shape. Teach the Lord's Prayer while pretzels bake.

Praying Hands Silhouette

• Help preschoolers create a reminder of their practice of the Our Father prayer to take home and display. Provide each preschooler with a traced and cut out praying hands silhouette. Instruct students to paint or color the silhouette black and glue onto a sheet of white paper. Create a frame for the silhouette out of another sheet of black paper or write the words of the prayer onto the paper to help students practice at home with their parents.

Our Father Mini-Book

• Preschoolers love crafts that are just their size, so help them create a decorative Lord's Prayer mini-book as you discuss the meaning of each line in the prayer. Cut paper to the desired size for two pages and fold in the middle. Stack the paper together to form the pages and staple, adding a piece of colored construction paper or card stock to the bottom to form the cover. Give preschoolers slips of paper to fit the book with one line of the prayer printed one each. Preschoolers will glue the papers and color the pages as you explain each line.