The Lord's Prayer
Teaching the Lords prayer to children should be a fun and repetitive lesson within your group. It will be a lesson that sets them up for life. (This is a six week lesson plan).
I have taught this lesson plan over the years through Bible in Schools, and it always gets an amazing response. The children enjoy each part of it, because you make it fun, they learn the prayer and it sets you up for many lessons in the future where you can return to it.
So firstly, we divide the prayer into parts to give you time to explain each part to the children, so they gain understanding. This also gives the children time to learn each part and make it like a memory verse.
I start each lesson by telling the children (each and every week) that Jesus gave this prayer to his disciples (his close friends) for them to be able to talk with God and also so that they could teach everyone else to say it. I ask the children “who can you teach this prayer to” and get them to interact with me.
I also ask them to find this prayer in their bibles at home and read it with their parents.
I also, each week, read the prayer in full and then go to the lesson/part of the prayer that we are learning that day. Ask your group to repeat the prayer after you, each and every week, many times helps! The weekly questions that I repeat are: -
Who gave us this prayer? Jesus
Who learnt this prayer and then taught it to other people? Jesus friends/disciples
Where can I find this prayer if I want to read it and pray it? The bible
So, the separation looks like this.
Lesson One =
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be your name;
Lesson Two =
your kingdom come;
your will be done;
on earth as it is in heaven.
Lesson Three =
Give us this day our daily bread.
Lesson Four =
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Lesson Five =
And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from evil.
Lesson Six =
For thine is the kingdom,
the power and the glory,
for ever and ever.
Amen.
Lesson One
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be your name;
What is important in this lesson is that we explain how GREAT God is, He is our Father, and we are talking to him, so we start with Our Father, and we know how great he is because we are saying you live in Heaven. We are recognising where He is. So at this point, I ask someone their address, (remembering they are 3-6) they may just give you a town, so then you say its like me saying – Dear Lucy who lives in Adelaide (or a town/city) that the child may have given you. You are recognising where they live, and where is a bigger or better place than Heaven as your address. This is explaining the word – art – in children speak/language.
We then move onto – hallowed – this can be a tricky one but try and keep it at their level it means – the best – the holiest – the most honoured – the greatest, we are saying you are GREAT, you are just the best there is NO ONE greater than you. Now I ask the children about their -bests- what is your best food? What is your best sport? What is your best toy? Getting them to imagine their best, helps them realise that we are saying God is the best – Hallowed = great/best/most wonderful
Now ask them back, what does Hallowed mean? Ask this each and every week, tell them how clever they are they have learned two new words this week – art – and -hallowed.
Hallowed be thy name, we are saying – great is your name – fantastic are you – so…..
Our Father who lives in the Heavens
Great are YOU
However, we do NOT want to be changing the words of the bible or of this prayer so be ware – stick to the words of the Gospel children will amaze you that they can learn the language of the bible, your job is to help them understand the words they are saying.
You can see why this little lesson can last a whole week; this prayer is so important it deserves time to be understood. After each week – bring out the craft relevant to this lesson, for this lesson / term, I tend to stay away from finishing my mat time and going into prayer time with the teaspoon prayer and just concentrate on saying the Lords Prayer for this whole term.
Please see the craft section for this lesson
Lesson Two
your kingdom come;
your will be done;
on earth as it is in heaven.
So here we are at the second week of learning the Lord’s Prayer.
Once again, remind the children by introducing the whole prayer to them by saying it and ask them – who told us to pray this prayer? Who taught this prayer to lots of people around the world? Where can I find this prayer if I want to read it? Who read this prayer with their family last week?
Now re read the whole of the prayer with the children repeating each part back to you – then stop at lesson two –
Your Kingdom Come
Your Will be done
On earth as it is in Heaven
Open the talk about – rules – what rules do you have in your house? You will find a number of different answers, some hilarious (the joy of teaching children) – no balls in the house – may be one, no shouting in the house (inside voices) – etc etc, as I say make a note of the funny ones you may need to remember them for stage time at the end of the term. Explain that in this part of the prayer we are saying that we want Gods rules – Your will.
Now explain to the children that we learnt last week about where God lives, where does He live? In Heaven, explain to them that Heaven is big, really big and another name for it is His Kingdom and at the moment His Kingdom is in Heaven but one day God’s Kingdom will be down here on Earth where we live. However we can pray each day that His Kingdom, God’s Kingdom comes down to earth so that things here will be as wonderful as Heaven and that He, (God) will be with His people, (us) all around us all the time.
Everything that happens in God’s Kingdom (where he lives) is His rules – His Will, tell them God is love, God is Great, God is kind, God wants good things for all of us, so we are asking that God rules and ways that are in His Kingdom (where he lives) we would like down here on Earth where we live. It is a big ask, tell them, we would like it to be as lovely as it is in Heaven, down here on Earth, but God is Good and Faithful and he hears our prayers and its important that He knows that we are wanting His Kingdom down here around us where we live.
Tell them, imagine going to a friends house and it is so wonderful, and so much fun, in their garden they have Disneyland – yes that’s right Disneyland all the rides, and parks and fun and food, wouldn’t that be amazing. When you got back to your house, do you think any part of you would want that in your garden as well, would you like your garden to be just like your friends with rides and parks and popcorn and all beautiful like that?
That is what we are saying to God, we want our place that we live in to be just like His, His Kingdom is wonderful and we want his rules and where He lives to be like that down here on Earth.
So, ask them to repeat it again
Your Kingdom Come
Your Will be done
On earth as it is in Heaven
Get them to repeat the whole prayer after you and move onto the second week of this craft (see craft section for this lesson plan).
Lesson Three
Give us this day our daily bread.
Oh my, this is by far my favourite part of teaching the Lords Prayer, in Bible in Schools I would take in loaves of sliced bread and bottles of squeezy honey and after learning this part of the prayer in Mat time, our craft would be to squeeze honey and eat the bread. I have worked in some very poor parts of New Zealand and I knew this was the first thing that the children had probably eaten that day. I would continually hear on other weeks, “please Miss can we do the bread part again”, what a privilege to get to teach these children.
So, within your Sunday school lesson, at mat time once again read them the whole prayer ask your questions again about who gave us this prayer? Who taught it to so many other people? Where can you read this prayer? Who has said it at home with their family this week? Then explain that this part of the prayer is us asking for something very personal, it is like our teaspoon prayers when we say the PLEASE part.
I like to talk to the children about how it might be if we didn’t have any food, ask them to imagine what it would be like, and that lots of children around the world, hardly have any to no food. Then I lighten it all up with asking them about their favourite sandwich or what they like to have on toast? The answers will flow, jam, peanut butter, Nutella, just butter, etc etc. This gets them thinking about bread, explain that this part of the prayer is us asking that we may have enough food to live.
However, it would be good to delve into something a little deeper here too, we can tell them that like we eat daily, we need to pray daily and in the bible it tells us that we should not live by bread alone, which means we wont have a good life if we just eat bread as we also need to understand everything that God says because that is what will make for a good life. That is about as deep as I would go with this part of the prayer. End your lesson with them repeating the prayer back to you – by this week I have started to add in some hand and arm actions to the prayer, these can be found at the end of the lesson plan.
Many craft/actions can happen after this lesson, I will list them and explain them in the craft section relevant to this lesson. This is a “fun” craft time!
Lesson Four
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Week four of the Lords prayer, once again start with saying the prayer with actions and getting the children to repeat back to you and ask the same (repetition works!) questions to your group - who gave us this prayer? Who taught it to so many other people? Where can you read this prayer? Who has said it at home with their family this week?
Remind them that last week we had the PLEASE part of our prayer where we asked God for something – ask them what did we ask for? (bread), Now explain that this part of the prayer is like our teaspoon prayer which is our SORRY part.
We are asking for God to forgive us of our trespasses – trespasses! – that’s a funny word isn’t it? What does it mean? It means all the things we may have done wrong; we are asking God to please forgive us of all those things that we have done wrong. The next line of the prayer is that just like we are asking God to forgive us we know that we also have to forgive people for things they have done that have upset us.
Ask the children, what has someone done to you one time that you had to say “its ok” when they said sorry, given an example of yourself – like – when I get tired, I get shouty sometimes and then I have to say sorry to my family for being shouty and they say “that’s ok mum you are tired”. I joke and say, sometimes I burn their dinner and I have to say sorry, and they say, “that’s ok”. What have you had to be ok about when someone has hurt you? Getting the children to explain their experiences helps them understand what we are saying in this part of the prayer. The stories will go along the lines of my brother hit me or my Dad did this etc etc, take time to listen and nod and smile. It is important that we explain to the children that Jesus loves us and he is happy to forgive us for things we have done wrong. What this part of the prayer is teaching us is that if we are forgiven by Jesus He too wants us to forgive others just as quickly.
Say this part of the prayer again and get them then to repeat the whole prayer in full.
Move on to the craft for this week. See craft section.
Lesson Five
And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from evil.
For this week/lesson I stay right away from the word evil, I get the children to say it, but I don’t focus on it because of the age of the group. I also bake cupcakes and take them into the class to explain about temptation!
So to start with once again get them to say the Lords prayer in full, then repeat back the words you are adding/learning this week then ask them the questions that we have been using - who gave us this prayer? Who taught it to so many other people? Where can you read this prayer? Who has said it at home with their family this week?
Remember children this age group, love to get things right and have the correct answer, so keep telling them they are so clever remembering all the answers to the above questions. So, what does this week’s words mean? We are asking – do not lead us into temptation, what this means is that we are asking God to help us not do anything naughty or wrong. Sometimes we need help to be good and God loves to help us. So, we need to ask him, God help me to do the right thing. Give them an example, if I put this plate of cupcakes in front of you - put a lovely big plate of cupcakes (or such like) in front of them, their eyes will grow in size.
Say, now if I ask you NOT to touch them and take one, because these are to take home at home time, would you take one and eat it? Would you know that it was wrong to take one when I said don’t take one? We really do want to just touch them and eat them now don’t we even though we have just had morning tea – but if we ask God to help us to not touch them that is just like the line in our prayer.
The next line we are asking God to keep us away from bad situations, we are asking Him to be with us and telling and showing God that we need him to keep us safe always.
Get a helper to remove the cupcakes quickly and move onto saying the whole prayer throughout and then tell the children about this weeks craft and remind them that they will be able to take a cupcake home with them at home time!
See the craft section for this Lesson Plan.
Lesson Six
For thine is the kingdom,
the power and the glory,
for ever and ever.
Amen.
This week I congratulate the children on how well they have learnt the Lords prayer and that they have been so super special and so clever that we are learning the whole end of the prayer all in one go.
So, start with reading the Lords prayer from the beginning right they way through and do the hand/arm actions with them. Then ask them the questions where the answers will fly from the children to you - who gave us this prayer? Who taught it to so many other people? Where can you read this prayer? Who has said it at home with their family this week?
For thine is the Kingdom, I tell the Children that we are talking to God in this part and we are calling him – thine – and just like at the beginning when we were telling God where he lived we are doing the same again. We are saying you are great, and where you live is great and you own all the Kingdom of Heaven. We are telling God that we know that He is all powerful and He has all the Glory, what we are saying is that there is NONE better than YOU and then we say for ever, and ever amen.
For this part I tell the children that we are telling God that we really, really, really do know that God will rule for ever and ever we know that He will never, never leave us and that is why we repeat it again and again. I joke with them saying it like we are saying that we know he is best for us for ever, and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever. (They will join in).
Then I ask the children why they think that they say amen at the end of this prayer or any prayer. They will come up with lots of things or nothing! According to your group. This is the time to tell them that this part is very important. It says that we are in agreement with what we have just said and with all the things we have just said. Amen means this is the truth and the fact that it comes at the end it is like our full stop so we must remember to say it.
I then explain it is like one of the helpers (use their name) saying Miss Cheryl I pray for you to be clever and know God and be very well this week and I say AMEN which means that I AGREE as I want to be clever and know God and be very well this week.
End with saying the whole prayer with all of the actions, ask them if they think that Big Church knows the Lord’s prayer and wouldn’t it be awesome if we taught big Church the Lords prayer and then get them to stand up and say it and do all the actions. There is also a song that the children can learn see music section for the correct song and see small children in big church - Stage Time for the actions to the song. This performance can be an addition to the children saying the Lords prayer for the audience.
See the craft section for the last craft and – take home – for this lesson plan.
