The Fall

Hi, friends! Here's my Sunday School lesson on the Fall from Genesis 3. The lesson includes a drama to read with your class, 2 object lesson activities, and 2 games. I've also included some links to other resources or ideas you can use to personalize your lesson time.

The Fall is an incredibly important story for building kids' awareness of why the world isn't as perfect as God intended. When you teach, I'd encourage you to emphasize the tragedy of Adam and Eve's decision to disobey God. When we don't listen to God in our own lives, it only hurts us in the end. God wants what's best for us, and He helps us show us what's best by giving us His rules.

If you haven't already covered the topics with your class, I invite you to check out my lessons on Creation and Adam and Eve's time in the Garden before the Fall . They'll provide the background you need to teach this lesson on the Fall.

Recommended Extras

You can easily spend two or three weeks on the Fall itself, and it might be very helpful to do so. If you decide to make it into a mini-series, I would recommend using these resources to tell and reinforce the story in different ways.

Paid Resources

The Animated Kid's Bible – This inexpensive boxed set portraying the Book of Genesis can be a great tool for illustrating the Bible stories. I recommend showing clips of the episodes either as an intro to your lesson or as a recap of what you talked about the previous week. Then, when you're finished with your lessons that one of the episodes covers, take a week to watch the entire episode as a review of the story. You can bring back some of the kids' favorite games and re-emphasize the main lessons you want to teach.

Superbook: In the Beginning - If you grew up watching Superbook, you'll be glad to know that it's back. The new series has all the characters and stories you love with updated animation. This first DVD even shows Lucifer's rebellion in Heaven, so kids will get a fuller picture of what's happening in the Garden. If your kids like the Superbook episodes, you can show them the Superbook website and app where they can spend time playing Bible games.

A is for Adam – Co-written by Ken Ham, the founder of Answers in Genesis, this book will make a great resource for your classroom or home library. The writing itself is meant for younger children, but it's entertaining enough that even older elementary kids won't lose interest. It tells the entire Gospel from Genesis to the New Creation and includes additional activity ideas that you can use in Sunday School or at home.

Free Resources

The Ministry-to-Children website has a neat object lesson for how our choices affect the other people. The teacher drops something on the head of an adult volunteer and explains how our choices can hurt others.

Truth for Children includes a nice coloring page and dot-to-dot in their children's Sunday School lesson on the Fall. Free Sunday School Curriculum also has activity pages and a game in which kids hold each other's ankles and slither on their bellies to create a giant snake.

The Story of the Fall Children's Sunday School Lesson

Purpose: Use this Sunday School lesson about the Fall to help kids think through the events of the Fall and the salvation that Jesus gives to us.

Needed: candy or treats; a potato or another object to pass around; a ripped up dollar bill, a crumbled up cookie, or a similar broken prize (Optional: a copy of the script for each of your characters, included after the leader's guide)

Intro Activity: Have a bowl of candy or other treats sitting out in plain view. In secret, ask your assistant (another adult) to tell children not to eat the candy, no matter what.

Then, you contradict what that person said. Tell the children they can have it. Talk to them about how good candy tastes and tempt them to take some. You'll return to this predicament after the lesson.

Lesson: (Note: Always allow students to give their answers to the questions before you clarify the teaching.)

Ask students, Can any of you think of a time when your parents made a rule or told you not to do something?

What did they tell you not to do?

Have any of you ever broken one of those rules that your parents gave you?

What happened when you broke the rule? Did your parents punish you? Did you feel bad about breaking the rule?

(The leader should also tell a story about a time when they broke a rule and got in trouble for it.)

(Act out the following play with your students, asking questions about the lesson as you go. You can give your student characters a script and let them read their lines or you can narrate the entire script yourself and simply instruct students to mime the appropriate actions as you go.)

Characters: Narrator (Leader), God, Adam, Eve, Snake Based on Genesis 2:7-9, 15-17; 3:1-24 (NIV):

Narrator: The LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (Adam is lying on the ground with his eyes closed, God forms Adam like play-doh and then breathes on him, Adam wakes up and stands)

Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden (God is planting a garden); and there He put the man he had formed (God puts Adam in the garden). God later also made a woman for the woman and she was in the garden too. (God puts Eve in the garden) And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food (God makes trees grow, pushing up with His hands). In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (God displays the two trees in the middle of the garden). The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and to take care of it. (God points to the plants in the garden, motioning for Adam and Eve to take care of them) And the LORD God commanded the man,

God: You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die. (God leaves)

Teacher: What did God tell Adam and Eve not to do? (He told them not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.)

And what was going to be their punishment if they did? (They were going to die.)

Why do you think God told them not to eat from that tree? Why would God put that tree in the Garden with them if He didn't want them to eat from it?

God wanted to test Adam and Eve to see if they would obey what God said. That's why He told them not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Sometimes, God tells us to do or not to do things to test us, to see if we will obey Him.

Narrator: Now the snake (Snake enters) was more crafty and more tricky than any of the other animals the LORD God had made. The snake said to the woman,

Snake: Did God really say, "You must not eat from any tree in the garden"?

Narrator: The woman said to the snake,

Eve: We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, "You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die."

Snake: You will not die,

Narrator: the snake said to the woman.

Snake: For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

Narrator: When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. (Eve takes a piece of fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and eats it) She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. (Eve takes another piece of fruit from the tree and gives it to Adam. Adam eats it.)

Teacher: Who told Eve to eat the fruit? (A snake.)

Who was that snake? (The devil, disguised as a snake.)

Narrator: Then Adam and Eve realized they were naked (Adam and Eve trying to cover up); so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. (Adam and Eve sewing leaves together) Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as He was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, (God walking up, Adam and Eve scared, they stop sewing their leaves together) and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. (Adam and Eve hiding from God) They knew that they had done something wrong and they felt bad about it. They felt guilty. But the LORD God called to the man,

God: Where are you?

Teacher: Do you think God really didn't know where Adam and Eve were?

God knows everything. Adam and Eve couldn't hide from God and neither can we. God is always with us and He sees everything we do.

Narrator: Adam answered,

Adam: I heard You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.

Narrator: And God said,

God: Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?

Teacher: Did God know that Adam and Eve had eaten the fruit? (Yes. God knows everything.)

So why did God ask them about it if He already knew?

God wanted to give them a chance to confess and admit what they had done. God always wants us to admit what we have done, too. God knows everything that we do, but He wants us to pray and confess what we've done and ask for forgiveness.

Narrator: Adam said,

Adam: The woman You put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.

Narrator: Then the LORD God said to the woman,

God: What is this you have done?

Narrator: Eve said,

Eve: The snake deceived me, and I ate.

Narrator: So the LORD God said to the serpent,

God: Because you have done this, cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put hate between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will crush your head, and you will strike His heel.

Teacher: What did God do to punish the snake? (God made the snake slither on its belly and He made it so that people wouldn't like snakes anymore and so that snakes wouldn't like people.)

Narrator: To the woman God said,

God: I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.

Teacher: What did God to punish the woman? (God made it painful for women to have children. He also made men to be in charge of women.)

Narrator: To Adam God said,

God: Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.

Narrator: And God made Adam and Eve leave the Garden of Eden. He made two angels with flashing swords stand guard at the entrance to the Garden and block Adam and Eve or anyone else from ever going into the Garden again.

Teacher: What did God do to punish Adam? (God made it harder for Adam to grow food. He made it so that they had to leave the Garden of Eden and never come back, and He made it so that Adam and Eve would eventually die.)

You remember that was what God told them would happen. He warned them that if they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would die. They weren't going to die right away, but they were going to die.

Did you know that if Adam and Eve had never broken God's rule, they never would have died? They would have lived forever! But they did break God's rule and we all break God's rules sometimes and do wrong things and that's why we all eventually die. Death is a punishment for the wrong things we do.

But if we believe in Jesus, we don't have to stay dead, do we? If we believe in Jesus, we will go to Heaven when we die and then God will bring us back to life when Jesus comes back to Earth.

Resolving the Intro Activity: If the children resisted your temptations, congratulate them on doing better than Adam and Eve did when faced with temptation.

If they gave in, tell them that the same thing happened to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Say, God told Adam and Eve not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, just like you were told not to eat the candy, but then what happened?

Then Satan, the devil, appeared as a snake and tempted Eve to eat from the tree, just like I was tempting you to eat the candy.

You're not going to get in trouble today for eating the candy, but Adam and Eve did get in a lot of trouble. God made them leave the Garden of Eden for disobeying Him and He made it so that they would get old and die someday. If they hadn't eaten from the tree, they would have lived in the Garden of Eden forever.

But Satan tempted them to do wrong, and Satan tempts us to do wrong things too, so we have to be careful and know when we're being tempted. That way, we can resist temptation so that we don't get in trouble like Adam and Eve did. We want God to be proud of us and happy with us when we resist temptation.

Game: Hot Potato - Have students stand in a circle. Give the potato to one child and have him pass it to their right, around the circle, as fast as they can while you time them for 30 seconds or so. The child holding the potato after 30 seconds is caught with it. Play a few times.

After the game, say Adam and Eve did something they shouldn't have done, didn't they? And then, when God asked them about it, they started blaming other people. Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the snake. They were passing the blame around just like we were passing that hot potato. Why do you think Adam and Eve wanted to blame someone else when they got in trouble?

No one likes to get in trouble. It's always easier to try to blame someone else. But did it work when Adam and Eve tried to blame someone else, or did they still get in trouble anyway?

They still got in trouble and were punished for disobeying God. Blaming someone else didn't work. And it doesn't work for us either. God knows everything we do. He knows when we do something wrong and He won't believe us when we try to blame someone else. If we do something wrong, we are responsible for it.

What do you think God wants you to do when you do something wrong?

The great thing about God is that if we take responsibility for our sin instead of blaming someone else, and ask God to forgive us, He will! God loves us and will always forgive us if we ask Him to. We just have to take responsibility for our sin and pray for God to forgive us for it.

Game: Satan's Lies - Ask for a volunteer to do something silly, like stand on their head or "oink" like a pig for 5 seconds. Tell them that if they do it, you'll give them (a dollar, a cookie, etc.).

Being kids, you'll probably have a number of them wanting to volunteer for the silly action. If you want, you can crumble multiple cookies and promise them all cookies for doing activities. Just tell them that they will all receive their cookies after everyone has done the activity who wants to.

Then give them all crumbled up cookies. When they complain, tell them that you promised them a cookie and you gave them a cookie. You never told them that the cookie would be in good condition.

Say something like, And that's kind of what happened to Adam and Eve in the Bible.

Did Satan, the snake, promise to give Eve something good if she ate the fruit she wasn't supposed to?

Was she happy after she ate the fruit?

It was kind of like Satan promised her something good, just like I offered you a cookie, but when she got it, it wasn't as good as she thought it would be.

Satan always does that. He tries to tempt us to do things that are wrong, and he makes it sound like doing wrong things is fun or will give us something that we want, but then if we do the wrong thing, we just feel bad about it.

So remember Satan's trick. If he wants you to do something wrong, it will never be something you feel good about afterwards. So don't do it. Tell Satan you know his trick and that you won't do the wrong thing he's tempting you to do. It's that easy!

Closing Prayer: Father God, we are sorry for the wrong things that we do. We pray that when we do something wrong, You will help us not to blame other people, but to just ask You to forgive us. Amen.

This lesson is included in my books, Created: Children Sunday School Lessons for Genesis 1-11 and Omnibus: 99 Children Sunday School Lessons for the Old Testament . Pick them up if you find it more convenient to use these lessons in Kindle or printed book formats.

If you're looking for more material on the Fall or how you can use these ideas in a different context, see my collection of Genesis children's sermons .

You can also follow this lesson with my Cain and Abel children's Sunday School lesson . It will help kids see how they can give God their best and why jealousy isn't the Christian way.

Have a blast teaching this week, and may God's Spirit be with your spirit! - Steve

The Story of the Fall (Student Script)

Characters: Narrator (Leader), God, Adam, Eve, Snake

Narrator: The LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (Adam is lying on the ground with his eyes closed, God forms Adam like play-doh and then breathes on him, Adam wakes up and stands)

Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden (God is planting a garden); and there He put the man he had formed (God puts Adam in the garden). God later also made a woman for the woman and she was in the garden too. (God puts Eve in garden) And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food (God makes trees grow, pushing up with His hands). In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (God displays the two trees in the middle of the garden). The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. (God points to the plants in the garden, motioning for Adam and Eve to take care of them) And the LORD God commanded the man,

God: You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die. (God leaves)

Narrator: Now the snake (Snake enters) was more crafty and more tricky than any of the other animals the LORD God had made. The snake said to the woman,

Snake: Did God really say, "You must not eat from any tree in the garden"?

Narrator: The woman said to the snake,

Eve: We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, "You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die."

Snake: You will not die,

Narrator: the snake said to the woman.

Snake: For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

Narrator: When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. (Eve takes a piece of fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and eats it) She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. (Eve takes another piece of fruit from the tree and gives it to Adam. Adam eats it.) Then Adam and Eve realized they were naked (Adam and Eve trying to cover up); so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. (Adam and Eve sewing leaves together) Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as He was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, (God walking up, Adam and Eve scared, they stop sewing their leaves together) and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. (Adam and Eve hiding from God) They knew that they had done something wrong and they felt bad. They felt guilty. But the LORD God called to the man,

God: Where are you?

Narrator: Adam answered,

Adam: I heard You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.

Narrator: And God said,

God: Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?

Narrator: Adam said,

Adam: The woman You put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.

Narrator: Then the LORD God said to the woman,

God: What is this you have done?

Narrator: The woman said,

Eve: The snake deceived me, and I ate.

Narrator: So the LORD God said to the serpent,

God: Because you have done this, cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put hate between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will crush your head, and you will strike His heel.

Narrator: To the woman God said,

God: I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.

Narrator: To Adam God said,

God: Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.

Narrator: And God made Adam and Eve leave the Garden of Eden. He made two angels with flashing swords stand guard at the entrance to the Garden to block Adam and Eve or anyone else from ever going into the Garden again.