"God Is Love" Poster Activity for Preschoolers

Donna Cosmato
Categories : Preschool crafts and activities for hands on learning
Tags : Early education information for teachers, parents & caregivers

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God Is Love

Hands-on activities like crafts are excellent ways to provide brain connection links for early learners.

By involving as many of the senses as possible, students internalize material and retain it better. This God is love poster for preschool art project provides many levels of learning and is age-appropriate for preschoolers.

Project Overview

Here are simple directions for a God Is Love poster. This theme is easy to prepare and teach, and the supplies are very inexpensive. This is a fun hands-on activity that can be completed in one lesson period. Their participation in this art lesson achieves the following educational objectives:

Learning how God shows His love
Developing fine motor skills by cutting and pasting
Encouraging hand-eye coordination

This project is age-appropriate for preschoolers and can be used in public or private schools, by homeschool educators, or in children’s ministries or organizations.

Here’s What You Need

If time is an issue, teachers may choose to cut-out the heart shapes prior to classtime. You’ll need:

Purple and red construction paper
Glue or glue sticks
Kid-friendly scissors
Art media like crayons, markers, colored pencils, and paints
Pictures of self, family, friends, pets, or other persons, places, or things picturing ways God loves us. The children can bring these from home or tear them out of magazines provided by teachers.
One large red heart and three small red hearts for each child
One copy of the poster headline for each child: God is Love
Copies of the following scripture formatted exactly as below:
For God so loved the world/that he gave his one and only Son,/that whoever believes in him/ shall not perish but have eternal life./John 3:16
Large heart template (click here) and small heart template (click here)

Teacher’s note: Copy and paste the text of the headline and the scripture into any word processing progam and print copies. The headline should be printed in G820-Deco font, 72 point type, and the scripture in Times New Roman font, 12 point type.

Prepare the Poster Art Materials

Prior to the class, trace enough small and large hearts on the red construction paper for each student’s poster. Print one copy of the large hearts template and one copy of the small shapes template, and use them as patterns. Use the small heart for the God Is Love poster project and reserve the rest of the shapes for future art projects like making crowns to go with a lesson on how Queen Esther saved her people or King David or Solomon.You can also use the shapes for collages or to teach shape or color recognition.

Here’s What You Do

Follow these steps to make the poster:

Let each child choose one large heart and three small hearts, and then paste the large heart in the center of the page.
Encourage the children to arrange the smaller hearts in a pattern that is pleasing to them and glue them to the poster.
Invite them to choose some pictures to glue onto the smaller hearts.
Give each child one copy of the “God is Love” title strip and help them glue it to the top of the page.
The verse from John 3:16 is glued in the middle of the big heart.
Let the children color their poster and decorate the hearts as they choose.

Display the posters in the classrooms as a visual reminder of God’s love, and then send them home with the students. By the end of this lesson, students have completed a God is love poster for a preschool art project and demonstrated their ability to follow verbal instructions to complete tasks in a timely manner. Fine motor skills and hand-to-eye coordination were exercised and developed.

Mini-Lesson on God’s Love

Here’s some suggested verbiage for a simple lesson to explain the concept of God’s love to your students.

Give each child a piece of purple construction paper and explain that the color purple traditionally symbolizes royalty. God is our king, and the purple represents his kingship.

The hearts are red, because red symbolizes Jesus’ blood, which He shed for our salvation. There’s no need to dwell on this point because salvation is an abstract concept, which preschoolers are not really ready to grasp. They think in concrete terms, not abstract. Focus instead on the concept of love: Hearts are symbols of love, and the large heart represents God’s great love. The smaller hearts show ways God demonstrates His love to mankind.

Read John 3:16 to the children, and explain that God is love because He chose to give his only Son to save everyone.

References

Author’s experience as a Christian educator

Image Credit: Poster - D. Cosmato/2010

SXC: Stock photo: Crayon Series (Image ID: 933341)