Activities on the 12 Disciples

Teaching Christianity in Sunday school or at a private school requires touching on all areas of Jesus Christ's life and his friends. These activities will help you follow the story of Jesus and the 12 disciples who followed him during his life. The wide range of interactive activities will ensure that students of all ages are able to learn this story through a variety of media.

This website contains free materials that you can print and students can complete. Several coloring pages depict Jesus and the 12 disciples, and there are printable puzzles including crossword, word search and mazes that relate to the 12 disciples. The site also features Sunday school lessons available as PDFs; these include fill-in-the-blank worksheets and detailed instructions for a game called Pass It On where players learn about Jesus while having fun with ping-pong balls.

This activity geared toward Sunday school participants -- as seen on Gospel Hall's website --involves a color PDF that contains several sets of nametags that allow teachers to customize the activity based on students' knowledge. In one activity, teachers can distribute nametags with a disciple's name and facts about him to teach children new information. In another activity, teachers can use the nametags with only disciple names on them and have children fill in the missing information. Finally, teachers can use nametags with just the brief biography and have children identify each disciple. Instructions are included in the PDF.

This studying activity on Bible.org includes suggestions of Bible passages to read to students; each passage leads the reader to key points in a disciple's walk with Jesus. Particularly, the site uses Biblical passages that support what it means to be a disciple. For instance, as the site notes in its Biblical interpretation, a disciple essentially "must be willing to suffer ridicule," states Matthew 10:24-25; he "must be willing to forsake earthly ties," states Luke 14:26; and he "must be willing to lay down his life in following Jesus," states the same verse. In addition to the passages, the site includes a fill-in-the-blank worksheet.

On this site, users can find free printable activities that incorporate lessons about the 12 disciples, including anagrams, crossword puzzles, cryptograms, mazes, word mining sheets and word searches.