Bible Buckets for Toys

New years is a great way to organize and clean out things. I like to work through the classroom to see what can be cleaned up, thrown away, or organized. That’s where the toys come in.
I don’t know about you, but when I teach classes, we are way too busy to play with toys. Don’t get me wrong, I try to make my lessons as hands-on as possible sometimes using toys to help make a point or have the kids get involved with the story. Having the kids just “play” with no point doesn’t seem like a good use of the precious little time I have with these kids. I want to use every minute possible to enrich their lives with Bible lessons and stories here are the best toys for boys. So, I got this idea to organize the toys in our classroom. I sorted the toys according to Bible stories. We had these white buckets already in the classroom and so I decided to use those to make the Bible buckets.
The first thing I did was to think of the major Bible stories that we typically teach: Creation, Noah’s Ark, Moses, David, Joseph, Abraham, Esther, Elijah, Daniel, Easter, Christmas, and Jesus’ life.
Then I made a bucket for each of the areas. I sorted out the toys and placed them within the bucket that made the most sense. For example: plastic animals went into the Noah’s ark, stuffed lion went in with Daniel, crowns went with Esther, and the nativity went in the Christmas bucket. Some other items were a bit of a stretch, like: the paddle ball went in with David (like a slingshot) and the plastic frog game went with Moses. I also went through our books and sorted those into the buckets as well.
Now when we get to a certain lesson theme, I can just bring out the bucket that corresponds with it for the kids to “play” with. That way, they are playing (which is an important part of learning), but it can be on topic of what the lesson is about. It also rotates the toys around so that they are more exciting to play with. The kids have books to look through and/or read and you can lead their learning through the Bible buckets.