Activities for Kids About God's Covenant With Abraham

If your family worships as Christian, Jewish or Islamic, your preschooler probably has heard of Abraham. Your child preschooler might wonder, “Would you put me on an altar to kill me?” or “If Isaac means laughter, what does my name mean? How did you choose my name?” Activities about the covenant between God and Abram might answer these and other questions your child has.

“God called Abram to leave his family and go to a promised land far away,” you explain to your little one. Take your preschooler to her room and ask her, “What you would take if God told our family to leave and go to a new place? Why would you take those things?” Have her pack a bag and pretend to leave all her friends to follow God’s promise. Have her build an altar as Abram did in Moreh and between Bethel and Ai.

“In Genesis 15, God renews his promise to Abram,” you tell your little one. “Abram wanted a son and God told him to count the stars in the sky because his grandchildren and beyond would be more than he could count.” Take your son outside to look at the night sky and try to count all the stars you can see. Let him help you make star-shaped cookies to remind him of God’s promise to Abram.

“God came to Abram a third time to renew His commitment. This time He changed Abram’s name to Abraham and Sarai’s name to Sarah.” Dress her up in a biblical costume and let her dramatize the story or have her use puppets to tell the story. She can draw a picture of an old Abraham and Sarah with a new baby or build a diorama of the strangers who came to see Abraham in Genesis 18:1-15. Ask her, “What new name would you like to have? Can you tell me why?”

“After Abraham and Sarah had Isaac, God asked Abraham to give Him Isaac as a sacrifice.” This might shock your preschooler. Give him a baby doll and a lamb and ask him to retell the story. He can make a cardboard roll ram with cotton balls glued on the roll for fur and tail, and a construction paper head and feet to represent the ram caught in the thicket. In this passage, God promised Abraham’s descendants would be more numerous than grains of sand on the beach. Pour 1/4 cup of sand in a shallow dish and ask him, “Can you count how many little pieces of sand there are in the dish? Think about how many pieces there would be on a whole beach.”