Cootie Catchers: Bible Stories & Actions

Did you ever make cootie catchers (or fortune tellers) when you were a kid? It was one of my favorite things to do! I’ve made them with Lydia before but once I saw this cute Nature Cootie Catcher from 5 Orange Potatoes, I racked my brain trying to think of a way to use this with a Bible Story or memory verse. Finally, we tried it out this week! And my kids loved it!

Here’s a mini-tutorial for making your very own cootie catcher!

1. Get a square piece of paper. If you don’t have square paper, just fold the top corner down until it is flush with the opposite side. Cut off the bottom rectangle and you have a square!

2. Fold your square in half again creasing the edge. Once you open up the paper, you should see two creases making an X on the paper.

3. Fold each corner into the center of the X on your paper.

5. Flip your new smaller square over and then fold your new corners into the X again.

6. Fold your new smaller square in half, slide your fingers into the corners, squish together and…

7. Here’s your cootie catcher! Isn’t that easy?

I decided to make an active game with our cootie catcher. I wrote different activities on each section. As they spelled a color or family  member’s name, sang the first line of a song, or said some ABCs, they opened and closed the cootie catcher to reveal numbers on the next panels. After picking a number, they opened and closed the cootie catcher again. After picking a second number, they revealed one of these activities:

We had so much fun doing all of these! My favorite was when Lydia asked, “Can I help you?” I asked her to do a chore and she did!

I tried to think of another way to use these–and tried to do a Bible story quiz. I put pictures from Moses’ story and we played until they could guess the story. It wasn’t quite as fun as the other one, but I still think it’s kinda cute.

Lydia and Asa couldn’t put them down!