Five Solas Craft for Kids

Teach your kids about the Five Solas of the Reformation with this fun and easy craft! It’s a quick activity that can lead into or support conversations with them about God’s Word.

Reformation Day is at the end of this month, so in anticipation of that I have been planning some fun activities to celebrate! At the root of the Reformation is the truth laid out in the Five Solas, so it’s a great lesson to include. And since kids remember stuff better when there’s something hands-on involved, I came up with a simple craft to go along with it!

A few years ago I began to really read my Bible and was surprised at the impact it had on me (doh). I truly desired to know God, understand His Word, and have my life be led by its truths. Since then we have made many changes in the way our family participates with the world. One notable change being that we stopped celebrating Halloween and shifted our attention instead to Reformation Day. 

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With four young kids, new habits and learning new holidays are a slow process here, but I enjoy sharing what I learn with my kids as I learn it. And as we work on starting new traditions, of course a big part of that will be crafts! This helps them process and internalize the significant lessons, while still enjoying themselves and making new memories together.

My kids always get excited when I take the paints out, and watercolors in particular are especially loved. Plus there is something special about watercolors that help them to always look beautiful in the end with very little skill or effort needed. Well, unless you’re my 3 year old who mixes and mixes until everything is brown, hehe. 

What You’ll Need

• Watercolor paper
• Watercolor paints
• White crayon
• A hand to trace
• A small cup of water
• Scissors
• Cardstock, plain or print

Making the Five Solas Craft

1. Trace the hand

Since we will be writing inside the hands, this works best if you use your own. At least for my kids, their hands are too small to then write inside the lines, even with my 7 year old. You can let your kids do the tracing, or let them just freehand (no pun intended) a hand without tracing one!

2. Write the “secret message” on the hand

After the hand was traced, I wrote each of the Five Solas on each finger with the white crayon. Write it in a room with good lighting so you can see the reflection off the wax to make it easier to keep track of! The Five Solas are as follows:

• Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone)
• Solus Christus (Christ alone)
• Sola Fide (faith alone)
• Sola gratia (grace alone)
• Soli deo gloria (to the glory of God alone)

3. Paint to reveal the message

Now comes the fun part for the kiddos! Let them use the watercolors to start coloring in the hand. It works best with more water so that the colors run off the wax more easily, but you don’t want the paper to get too soaked. The watercolor paper will handle it way better than regular paper though, which is why I think it’s worth it to spend the money on actual waterpaper for these types of crafts!

As they are painting, you can encourage your kids to try different simple watercolor techniques. Swirling, marbling, blending colors. Aside from the entire paper turning brown (hi again to Mister 3), there’s really no undesirable result with watercolors. So it’s a great medium to explore creativity with.

4. Cut out and mat the hand print

Once the handprint is painted and dried, it can be cut out by you or your kids. This can be the end of the craft if you want! But we chose to put our handprints on a mat to make it extra decorative. I just took a piece of white cardstock and wrote the five solas in script handwriting across the page. I thought the black ink made a nice contrast to the colorful handprints! 

So there is our quick and easy five solas craft for Reformation Day. We will have these hung up until the end of the month, but we will continue to live out these truths every day of the year!

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