The past few weeks I’ve been doing some craft and activity ideas with my son that would be perfect for Passover or The Feast of Unleavened Bread. In each one I’ve included some instructions for teaching the Biblical lesson while you create and/or play. These ideas would be great to help teach your own kids the absolute most important thing from the Bible: The Gospel.
In today’s craft we are doing a tape resist painting craft with the name of Jesus. This craft is a perfect opportunity to incorporate a lesson about how Jesus cleanses us from our sins, we only have to bring them to Jesus in repentance. The paint represents sin and removing the tape that’s shaped in the name of Jesus helps to visually show how Jesus washes away our sins if we lay them at his feet.
Jesus Tape Resist Painting Craft Supplies:
- Heavyweight Paint Paper, White Cardboard, or Canvas
- Tempera/Washable Paint
- Paint Brushes
- Painters Tape or White Masking Tape
- Paper Plate (for paint palette)
- Pencil and Eraser
Name of Jesus Painting Preschool Craft Instructions:
First gather your supplies. A note about paper. The one pictured here is not ideal, but it’s all I had. Ideally you would use some kind of watercolor or paint paper because it needs to be strong enough to hold up to the tape being removed. This one did tear a little when I removed the tape.
For the paint brush it doesn’t really matter what kind of brush you use, it’s not too important.
And in regards to the tape, it would be pretty cool to use a white painters or masking tape, like this one. Because it would have more of an effect once removed. But it’s not crucial that you do it that way.
After you have your supplies you’ll want to prep the page for painting. To make sure the name will fit on your paper, it’s a good idea to draw out the letters with a pencil. You will have to erase the pencil marks after you’re done. But I think it’s worth it. I tried taping off the letters without writing them out first and was making the letters way too big.
I also tried doing this step with my son watching and found it took a little too long to keep his attention. I tried talking to him about how this is the name of Jesus and about how He was God’s plan of salvation. But, honestly I would completely do this step on your own if your kids are smaller. Then bring out the prepared page to paint with them and do the lesson once it’s ready. It just takes too long to prep to keep their attention (depending on their age).
Next let your child start to paint the paper. Like I said above, having white tape would probably have a greater impact on the lesson. But using regular painters tape or masking tape would be just fine.
For paint, choose any colors you or your child wants. I chose a rainbow color scheme for a few reasons. One, because it’s almost springtime and it’s perfect for spring! And secondly because rainbows are pretty significant in the Bible. Not only because of the promise rainbow that God sends after Noah’s flood. But also because Jesus tells us that He is the light of the world (John 8:12) and white light actually contains all the colors in the rainbow. Kind of brings a whole new meaning to the promise rainbow in regards to Jesus, doesn’t it? 🙂
As you paint this tell your child that the paint represents sin. We all sin, even when we don’t intend to, because we are imperfect and it can be hard to resist the temptation to sin. When Adam first sinned in the Garden of Eden sin entered the world and it spread like a disease all over.
As you switch colors tell them that there are all different kinds of sin, like lying or dishonoring your parents. The Bible tells us what sin is so we know what we should and shouldn’t do. No matter what type of sin we do, it is all sin in God’s eyes, and when we sin it makes God sad and it’s hard for us to be close to God.
As soon as you’re done painting start taking the tape off. You don’t want to wait until the paint dries. As you remove the tape tell your child that God wanted to be close to us again. But He knew that we could never clean ourselves from all the sin on our own. So He made a plan to send Jesus to save us from our sin.
Tell them that when we ask Jesus to forgive us of our sins, He washes us clean so that we can be close to God again. After you remove all the tape, tell your child that the sin we repent of and bring to Jesus is forgiven (point to the white part where Jesus’ name is). But when we don’t repent, we still have sin in our lives that keeps us from being close to God (point to the parts of the page with paint still on it).
After you finish the painting be sure to let it dry before you erase all the pencil marks. Round out the lesson by telling your child that it’s important for us to ask God for forgiveness when we sin. So we can be free of that sin and Jesus can wash us clean. We should always try not to sin, but even when we try we still make mistakes. And God will forgive us, but we need to ask and do our best not to do that anymore.
I hope you and your child(ren) enjoy this craft and lesson! If you decide to do it, be sure to leave a comment below to let me know how it goes!
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