How to Use Review Games in Children's Sunday School

You're teaching Sunday School and you've just finished telling your Bible story for the day. It's time for a game, but you would really like to believe that the kids were actually paying attention while you taught this morning. But how can you be sure? The answer is by asking some carefully worded review questions!

Sunday School review questions help teachers know if the students actually captured the message that they were trying to communicate in their lesson. And you can easily turn the review questions portion of your Sunday School class into a game so that it's fun for your students as well.

When we play review games in my Sunday School class, I like to use review questions about the Bible story. Sometimes the curriculum you're using will have review questions provided for you at the end of the lesson. But you can also easily make up your own review questions or add more questions to the list provided to assure that you have plenty of review questions for your game.

Writing review game questions is actually pretty simple. You can start with basic questions. Ask about things like the names of the characters in the Bible story, what the characters did, what book of the Bible the story is found in, etc. I like to have about a dozen basic fact questions as a starter. You can adjust these questions for the age-level that you are working with too. If you have preschoolers, you'll want to have really, really basic questions that they will know the answers to.

You will also want to throw in questions that will help gauge whether the child actually understood the lesson. These are questions that are a little more involved. For example, you might ask your kids a question like why they think a certain character reacted the way they did and even why God did what He did. These types of review questions should require a bit more thought on the child's part. Don't make the questions too hard though because you don't want to put any of your kids on the spot or make them feel uncomfortable.

Finally, you will want to add some life application review questions as well. If your lesson was about obedience, you can ask questions like, "What is one way that you can obey your parents?" Use questions that will cause your kids to think about how they can apply the Bible teaching to their own lives.

To give the kids a little incentive to participate in the review game, keep a stock of little prizes that you can award to kids (or team of kids) who answer questions correctly. You can use things like candy, stickers, pencils, balloons or any number of inexpensive fun toys that kids will like.