Teaching youth in middle school can be a challenge. They are not quite as young and impressionable as elementary-aged students, but they do not have the maturity of high school adolescents either. If you teach Sunday School classes to middle school kids, it is important to infuse an element of fun into your lessons or you risk having the lessons fall on deaf ears. Plan games that will help middle school youth loosen up and focus their energies on the lessons.
Who Am I?
Write the names of Bible characters on several index cards. As the students enter the Sunday School classroom, tape an index card to every kid's back. Instruct the students to find out who they have on their back, without actually getting the name from another student. All students have to ask a series of "yes" or "no" questions to find out who their Bible figures are. This will give them time to talk and move around at the start of the class, so they will be more likely to sit still and focus during the remainder of the lesson.
Act it Out
Give a small group of middle school students a Bible story. Their task is to modernize that story and act out a skit for the rest of the class based on the story's lessons. So, for example, instead of the story of the Good Samaritan they might tell a story of helping the "nerdy" kid in school. Then the rest of the class has to guess the Bible story that served as the inspiration for the skit.
Pictionary
Use a chalk board, dry erase board, or large pad of paper to play Bible Pictionary. Put a series of Biblical characters or stories on index cards and have a player draw a card. He has to draw the card's topic and get his teammates to guess what he has drawn, without speaking.
Paper Games
Turn your lesson's main topics into clues for a crossword puzzle or word search, and print the puzzle onto paper. Let the students compete against one another to be the first to finish, and award a small prize to the winner.
Jeopardy
Use a PowerPoint template for Jeopardy and an LCD projector to put Bible trivia questions in the classic game format. Let kids play in teams to compete for a prize. If you do not have a computer and projector in Sunday School, you can write your question categories and dollar amounts on the board and then erase them as students answer the questions.