I have been teaching 3 year olds and as I come across ideas I'd be happy to share with you. Many of the ideas I find are for older kids that I just work to make 'simpler' if you will for my small tikes.

It would help if I knew what you were looking for exactly?!

G

I was asked by my boss's wife and daughter (who happen to be a dentist and family friends of a man I had recently married back in 1978)to teach these kids.

Having been brought up strick Catholic, I was unsure how to teach these kids.

What I was told basicly was that these kids were bused in ( so the church would "look good" in the community, however there was so much preduice against these kids that I was selected to teach them.

I was further told that There were basicly "no supplies" that could be taken from the church and I was gonna have to figure out how to entertain these kids for that one hour time.

On one occassion, I decided that I wanted to take them on a feild trip to my in-laws pool which was heated and large to accomidate them in their back yard. We are talking 3rd grade kids.

So, I borrowed my in-laws cadillac and went and picked up these mexican kids...some in homes with dirt floors. The mother of one would not let her children go until after 1 half hour she came out to talk to me. She was concerned about the saftey of her kids as mexican were not respected well in this town by many of the white Christain folks, although I am sure not all the case (just my experience here)My father-in-law couldnt say "no" to me but Iam sure he was trying to figure out how to not let this happen, but when we arrived and I tried to served lemonade I could see the embarrassment and stress my in-laws were going through by worrying what the neighbors would think. They didnt want them in the house to use one of the 3 bathrooms or any towels.

My father-in-law taught at a local Christian University that didnt believe in mixed swimming or drinking of alcohol...Funny things is that all his cronies came over to swim and drink wine with him.

I was finally asked to get them out of the pool as he was too worried about them peeing in his clean pool.

If any of those kids out there today are reading this I hope that that little town has learned to welcome you all as the sweet gifts that you were for me in that class.

We laughed alot and played alot even though we hardly did anything related to the bible school studies.

I never taught bible school again and have no respect for that pecticular religion - I think Christ had differnt ideas about fellowship and the children than this Church projected.

whew! Thanks for allowing me to vent that one!

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Jippy-It must be a challenge to work with such an age spread. I taught 3rd/4th for 3 years, then we needed to split the group and I taught 4th the last two years. Next year (we don't have regular ss in the summer) the 5th/6th is being split and I'm teaching 6th.
We teach with 3 teachers to a class, each of taking turns with lessons and taking a sunday off. So one week, I'll teach, the next week, I'll asst., and the 3rd week, I have off.
Anyway, I have happened to be with ss school teachers who are teachers, including myself. We do have a curriculum, but we each use our individual interests to present it to the kids. One teacher I worked with is into crafts, so she usually does a craft project with them, another teacher I work with loves story telling so she usually does alot of reading with them, I love geography and history so I incorporate that into the bible stories. I also love gardening and nature, so I bring that in. It's neat cause the kids get a variety of experiences.
Each sunday school teacher (whether trained teach. or not) brings with them their own special talents and interests.
Whether it's cooking or sewing or traveling or reading or crafts or animals or whatever is your passion you can meld that with the Bible lessons and have fun with it while learning.
I also try to make the lessons "multi-sensory" for the kids. When we did genesis, I grabbed plants from my home and from around the church and recreated the garden of eden. I made the tree of life from a branch from my yard, stuck it in a pot, and bought some plastic fruit ornaments from the dollar store. I had a cd at home of amazon jungle sounds and I played that in the background. Then the kids acted out the story.
When we did Jesus in the wilderness, I happen to have sand my husband brought back from the middle east when he went for a iraq war project and I brought that in. I also had some sand from a tropical beach and some sand from our beaches here in NE. I spread out an old tan blanket, I grabbed some rocks from the church yard and put them down, I grabbed some books from the church library with photos of the middle east deserts, and I put the different sands in pie plates on the blanket. They all felt and compared the sand. The middle eastern sand is very rough. I wanted them to imagine the conditions Jesus lived through.

Anyway-I'm sorry if this is long and I hope it helps.
Everyone is unique and special and I'm sure you have wonderful talents to share with your kids. Doesn't have to be elaborate or expensive.
Best wishes!

For what it's worth, if you're willing to eschew the use of a traditional curriculum...

My husband and I have seen numerous Bible lesson/Sunday school curricula taught - in our own church and in schools. They're fine. Sometimes they're very good. But even the best curricula I've seen have kind of a generic feel - tell the story, do the skit, play the game, explain the points, highlight the verse, yada yada yada. And they tend to tell the same stories (The Flood, David & Goliath, The Good Samaritan, Feeding the 5K). That's OK, but there are so many good stories in Scripture that kids would love that rarely get talked about.

My son (1st grade) remembers a few of the lessons he hears in SS, but by far what he loves best is when I tell him the stories from Scripture myself, because I tell them in a way that makes them exciting for someone his age and I'm able to highlight what will speak to his heart most. I sometimes embellish a bit (e.g. when telling the story of Elijah & the prophets of Baal, we make up songs that they might have sung when they were dancing around the bonfire...) here and there to make the points exciting without losing the integrity of the passage. I recently did this when substituting for the SS teacher at church and the kids LOVED it. My idea for you - if you have any gifted storytellers around, use them to tell the stories in ways that speak uniquely to where your kids are.

Some ideas for Bible stories that I've seen kids really connect to that may not show up in most SS curricula but can be told in engaging and fun ways:

Elijah & the Prophets of Baal
Elijah in the cave after taking on the Prophets of Baal
Balaam & his talking donkey
Peter's dream on the rooftop in Acts
The friendship of Jonathan & David
Jesus getting lost from his parents as a young boy
God's call to Samuel
Moses at the burning bush
Moses' father-in-law advising him to let others help him do his work