How To Use Puzzles
Puzzles are activities elementary children can enjoy any time. Because many puzzles give attention to certain Biblical passages or themes, they can also enhance your specific lesson. Word puzzles are great to use at the beginning of class while waiting for everyone to arrive because they require little guidance from the teacher. Use our handy Topical index to find puzzles that go with a particular subject or lesson objective.
Versions
Most Word Puzzles are suitable using any version of the Bible. However, when appropriate, we provide a King James version along with a New International version.
Printing
Each puzzle handout is in PDF form for easy and consistant printing. You can produce the number of copies needed using your printer or a copy machine. To print PDF files, you must have Adobe reader. To download the free program from the Adobe website, click here
Puzzle Types
The type of puzzle is indictaed at the begining of the puzzle description on the puzzle index page. Besides the familar mazes and the puzzles you must put together, we also offer several types of challenging word puzzles.
Word Searches
These puzzles consist of a grid filled with letters, and the object is to locate specific words hidden within the grid. Word can often run in different directions, and some letters may be used more than once. Difficulty and amount of time needed to complete each word search depends on the number and complexity of hidden words.
Crosswords
Everyone is familiar with a crossword puzzle. They consist of empty squares that are numbered, to correspond with clues. You enter the correct word to match each clue eight going accross or down. In many cases, the children can find the words needed to complete the corssword at the bottom of the handout. Blacken out these words to make the puzzle more difficult for the children to solve.
Word Fill-ins
These are a lot like crosswords, only the letters of words do not necessarily intersect to form other words. Normally Filll-ins are much easier to do than crosswords, and often have a hidden message.
Word Scrambles
Word Scrambles are sentences that have one or more words scrambled, or a series of scrambled words. The object is for the children to figure out how to unscramble these words, usually by locating a certain verse from the Bible, or from a list of words provided at the bottom of the page.
Word Winders ©
These are a more difficult version of the familiar word search. However, here you are given a starting point on a numbered grid for a particular word, and the letters in the word are found by winding through the grid either up, down, left, or right. As letters for each word are found, the squares of the grid are shaded in, usually to reveal a hidden message when completed.
Cryptograms
Cryptograms use a code to represent certain letters. The player uses a decoder to determine what letters to use and in what order to reveal a message.