Noah’s Ark

Young children never seem to tire of hearing the story of Noah, the ark he built, and the animals God saved during the Great Flood. Following are several activities you can use to reinforce this incredible story of faith and obedience with your favorite preschooler.

When we were learning about Noah’s Ark, the first thing we did (as always) was read the story from Remi’s Bible. (It starts in Genesis 6.) Then, we crafted a paper plate ark and a few pairs of animals to go inside it. I printed the animals and cut them out ahead of time (just because I knew we’d be limited on time that day) and Remi painted the ark and rainbow, and glued the animals onto craft sticks. Here’s how her finished product looked:

(You can find the free templates here.) First, she painted the rainbow and we glued it onto a paper plate. I adapted the craft by NOT printing the lower half of the ark; I simply cut a second plate in half and let her paint it brown.

Attaching that to the other plate created a pocket, perfect for inserting the animal pairs as we talked about them boarding the ark. Remi was so proud of her creation, and told the story over and over as she played with this throughout the day—a great built-in review!

Our snack for this story? You guessed it: animal crackers!

We did some animal puzzles while we talked about the animals that were brought into the ark. Many children’s Bible story books inaccurately picture Noah out rounding up animals and dragging them back to the ark, so while we “worked” we discussed the fact that the Bible says God brought the animals to Noah. He didn’t have to hunt them down!

We also played with our Noah’s ark matching cards, and had fun giving names to the boy/girl pairs and making various animal sounds while we played.

For a movement activity, Remi pretended to be different animals boarding the ark. If I called out “kangaroo,” she would hop. If I called out “snake,” she’d slither on her belly. She crawled slowly like a turtle, lumbered like an elephant, waddled like a penguin, and more. Watching her interpretations of some animals was a riot!

Next we got out our Noah’s ark play set and worked on matching and naming all the different pairs of animals.

We ended up leaving this out all week, and she would sit down and play around with it several times a day.

There are many important character qualities you can emphasize with your child while learning about Noah: faithfulness, obedience, trust in God, being a hard worker, standing “alone” for God, and more. Our kids need good heroes, and Noah can certainly be one of them!

(I’ll add more of our Noah activities when I post about the letter N.)

Be sure to follow this lesson with one on God’s Rainbow Promise.

Enjoy learning together!