This craft activity is great for a windy, spring day. It’s would be a great Pentecost Sunday School craft. The children will make a pinwheel to teach them about how God is a spirit. A lesson can be taught, followed by making the craft and the children will finish by playing with their pinwheels outside. Click here to leave your comments or suggestions about this craft idea.
Target Age: 2nd-5th grade
Key Verse: John 3:8 “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
Time Needed: 20 minutes for the craft only (The children may spend a long time decorating their pinwheel. The length of craft depends on how detailed your children will want to decorate. You know your children best and can judge how long this craft will take.)
Materials Needed:
- One square piece of heavy construction paper per child
- One pair of scissors per child
- One thumb tack per child
- One pencil (with an eraser) per child, preferably brand new
- Crayons, colored pencils, and stickers for decorating the pinwheels
Procedure:
- Fold the construction paper on the diagonal from corner to corner. Open the paper up and fold on the second diagonal across the other two corners. When the paper is opened flat, the folds make an “X” across the square.
- Make one cut along each fold beginning at the corner and cutting toward the center. The cut should stop about halfway toward the center. The cut should not go all the way to the center of the square.
- Decorate each section of the square on both sides of the heavy construction paper using the materials provided.
- Take every other corner, one at a time and gently pull it up to the center of the square.
- When all four corners meet at the center, take the thumb tack and push it through all four corners through the center of the square.
- Push the thumb tack through the eraser of the pencil.
- Blow on the pinwheel and watch it spin!
Use this craft to teach the children about how we can hear and feel the wind, but we cannot see it. We can see the results of the wind, but we cannot see the wind itself. Relate this to God. We can hear His voice through His Word and feel His peace, comfort, joy, etc. We cannot see Him, but we can see the results of His work.
If you are using this for your Pentecost Craft in Sunday School, be sure to see our other resources to help you explain Pentecost for children.
Tips:
- I recommend using a square which is 6 inches or smaller in diameter. You want the length from one corner to the center of the square to be shorter than the pencil.
- The thicker the paper you choose to use, the more sturdy the pinwheel will be. Thick paper will better withstand to the wind and blowing by a child.
- Do not push the thumb tack all the way through the pencil eraser causing the pinwheel to attach tightly to the pencil. If pushed in too tightly the pinwheel will not turn.
- Here is another website we found with helpful illustrations of folding the pinwheel.
Let me just say thank you, thank you thank you for this website! I am a Sunday School teacher at young (12 years in existence) church in Baltimore, MD. A couple of years ago a church restructured Sunday School so that all of the Sunday School classes (adults, teens, and children) would be learning about the same topics/themes each week during Sunday School. Well, the curriculum of lesson overviews are not child friendly by any stretch of the imagination. At one time, prior to the restructuring, we were purchasing children’s Sunday School curriculum’s. That began to prove itself a costly expense that wasn’t always getting used up as the attendance would fluctuate in extremes at times. As the children’s Sunday School teacher I have to adapt all of the lessons now. I am a teacher by trade. So, I know what a child friendly lesson looks like. This website has been a Godsend, literally. I came across the website about a year ago and I frequently come here for lesson ideas. Thank you so much for providing this as a resource for universal Kingdom advancement. Please let me know where I can send a monetary donation. This website is a blessing and I want to sow a seed (perhaps several seeds over time) and bless you back.
Let me just start by saying God richly bless you and everyone involved. I am getting a bit emotional as I am typing this out because your website has been of tremendous help to me. I am a Sunday School teacher in Ghana, West Africa and hmmm, words are just not enough for me to express my gratitude to God for this website and all of you involved. The lessons, crafts, and everything have been of great help to me helping the kids to connect with God. It helps in making the word of God so real, so relatable to them and I am really appreciative of that. Though we face so many challenges – space, logistics, etc – finding your website has been just divine. God richly bless you all. I love you all.
I cannot thank you enough for your free resources! I am the Youth leader at a small country church and I believe that God has clearly spoken to me about starting a ministry at a local trailer park near our church. And to top that off, God also put it on the heart of an older gentleman who attends our church and lives at that trailer park, and who is VERY respected there. We will meet once a month, on a Sunday afternoon from 3:00-4:30 and pray that we will build trust and relationships with the families there, and eventually start a bus ministry. The lessons I believe God wants us to start with are all clearly offered here!!!!! I thought I was going to use old VBS materials but I was not at peace with that. I prayed and then started searching on the internet and found you. There are no words to express how thankful I am to you and the Lord for providing this site. I cannot wait to see what He is going to do in and through this new ministry in our community! (And I don’t have a clue how to do it so He is leading all of the way.) 🙂
“Ministry To Children” has such an incredible gift of ministry to all of Gods children! I commend you on your teaching style that really makes the bible fun to learn for children of all ages! We need to clone you a thousand times over. This world desperately needs more creative Sunday School teachers that can present the Bible in such a clear manner for them to understand. Simply wonderful! I thank God for you!
I take this moment to also thank you very much for this resourceful website. I usually build on what you have to suit the ages of my Sunday School children. I have used so many of your posted Bible lessons and am very grateful for them. I do pray you will continue to share as you have been doing. May God continue to bless this Ministry to Children’s site.
During Covid 19, I have been providing some type of weekly lesson with a coloring page that is dropped off at the homes with our younger children. I looked at coloring pages, but thought, these children will not understand flames over someone’s head. I then googles children’s lessons on Pentecost, and your site popped up. I never would have thought about pinwheels, but it is a PERFECT object for this lesson. Since we cannot work together with the children on a craft I will be lazy, and pick up windmills at the dollar tree (we only have 6 families) . Thank you