Best 20 Psalm 23 Printable Activities for Kids (Coloring, Cards & More)
Psalm 23 is the one my eight-year-old can recite without looking, which happened entirely by accident. We printed a coloring sheet during a long February and taped it to his bedroom door, and now he just knows it. The Lord is my shepherd. Green pastures. Still waters. He doesn’t know what “I shall not want” means yet but he says it with real conviction, so we’re getting somewhere.
Sunday school is where this stuff gets tested at scale. I sub for the little-kids class – the three-to-six crowd – more Sundays than I planned when I volunteered, and I can tell you that a printable lives or dies in about ninety seconds. Too many lines and the coloring devolves into one giant brown scribble. Too little and they’re done before the glue sticks dry. Psalm 23 hits a sweet spot because kids already sense it’s about safety, even before they understand sheep. Print it with something to color and they’ll sit for a while. Maybe long enough for you to drink your coffee warm.
Below are sixteen Psalm 23 printable activities and downloads that have passed through my printer, my kitchen table, and assorted Sunday school chaos. I’ve sorted them by what actually worked – coloring pages, card designs, iron-on prints, the occasional funny one my husband liked too much. Heads up: some links below are affiliate links, so if you grab something through one it helps keep PsalmKids going at no extra cost to you.
Heads up: some links below are affiliate links. If you grab something through them it helps keep PsalmKids running, at no extra cost to you.
Color the Full Psalm 23 with This Bible Quote Love Bundle
I printed three sheets from this bundle on a Tuesday afternoon when everyone needed something to do and nobody could agree on what. My youngest, who is three and mostly just colors everything brown, went straight for the verse text and turned the letters into a scribble garden. Eli, six, actually read “The Lord is my shepherd” out loud and asked me what a shepherd does. We looked it up. Twenty-minute rabbit trail. Worth it.
The art leans ornate – lots of flourishes and layered text – which is beautiful if you’re printing for older kids or card display, but can frustrate the under-five crowd who want cleaner lines to stay inside. Print at 85% to open up the spacing a little. The PNG resolution is solid at full size.
Kids Color a Heart-and-Cross Sheet Connecting Love and the Shepherd Psalm
Hearts and crosses together on one sheet. My daughter Nora, who is eight and has an opinion about everything visual, said “that’s actually pretty” before she even picked up a crayon, which is high praise from her. She used coral for the roses and left the cross white because “white is pure, Mom,” which I wrote down.
The design is denser than it looks in the preview – the roses pack tight around the cross and younger kids will color the whole thing one color and call it done, which is fine. The lines are clean and it prints dark enough that even my janky inkjet doesn’t lose them. Good for a verse-card format if you trim to 5×7 after coloring.
Print and Color the Faith Goose Psalm 23 Green Pastures Sheet
A goose carrying a little faith banner, walking through what I interpreted as green pastures. Nora laughed immediately and said “that’s a silly goose” in the most literal possible way. We used it in Sunday school as an icebreaker – I asked the kids what they thought the goose was walking toward and got answers ranging from “heaven” to “a pond” to “more geese.” All valid.
The humor makes this one stick. Kids remember the goose. Three weeks later Eli still referenced it when we read Psalm 23 at home. The art style is cartoonish, which makes it forgiving to color fast. One note: the banner text is small and comes out slightly blurry on standard print settings – bump to 600 DPI if your printer allows.
Print the God Doesn’t Desert Sunset Faith Sheet to Go With Verse 4
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death” is verse 4, and this sunset design sits right alongside that feeling without being dark or scary about it. The colors in the preview are gorgeous – deep orange, pink sky – but this is a PNG you’re printing, not displaying, and on my printer the sunset came out a bit muddy unless I used photo paper.
For classroom use I print it in grayscale so kids can color their own sunset, which turns into a nice conversation about what colors feel safe to them. Nora did hers in lavender and gold. I framed it. It’s still on her wall, crooked, because she hung it herself and refused help.
Color and Sign a ‘So Will I’ Psalm 23 Worship Card for a Friend
“So will I” is a praise response phrase, and this design pairs it with flowing lettering that photographs well on cardstock. My husband asked me to print extras because he wanted them for the youth group teens – they colored them during a slow Wednesday night meeting and gave them to their parents on Sunday. Apparently three dads cried, which I’m only slightly jealous of.
The design runs long on the horizontal axis, so make sure you’re printing landscape or it crops. The lettering style is more teen-and-up than little-kid – my three-year-old had zero interest – but Nora and her friends treated it like a journaling activity and wrote notes on the back.
Write and Color the ‘Goodness’ Psalm 23 Verse Card Step by Step
“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life” – that’s verse 6, the one kids always fumble, and this design puts the word GOODNESS big enough that even Eli could trace it without losing his place. We used it for a handwriting practice session, which sounds boring but he asked to do two because he wanted to give one to his teacher.
The art surrounds the text with small decorative elements that are just the right size for precise coloring – you need either a fine-tip colored pencil or a patient child. Not the Sunday school choice (nobody in that room has fine motor patience before 10 AM). Better for home use, quiet afternoon, maybe one child at a time.
Color the Christian Sports Bundle Sheets: Psalm 23 for Active Kids
Sports plus scripture is a combination my husband discovered and I have now printed nine hundred times, roughly. This bundle puts faith verses alongside athletic imagery – footballs, baseballs, the works – and the Psalm 23 angle is the “I shall not want” version of confidence before a game. Eli took one to his soccer practice folder and his coach asked about it.
Three color variants are included, which is genuinely useful because kids fight over colors and having a “different version” defuses it. The designs are busy – a lot happening on one page – so print at 75% for a cleaner look. The linework is thick enough that even my three-year-old’s marker-heavy technique doesn’t bleed through.
Print a Give-Thanks Verse Card Kids Can Color and Mail to Grandparents
“Give thanks to the Lord for He is good” sits in the Psalm 118 family but lives right next door to Psalm 23 in how kids experience it – simple, declarative, something they can say aloud and mean. This design works as a card. We actually mailed one to my mother-in-law last November. She called and said she cried. I confirmed this is a recurring theme with our mail.
Print on 110-lb cardstock, fold in half, and you have a 4.25×5.5 card that fits a standard envelope. The verse text is centered and large enough that the whole thing stays readable even with heavy crayon coverage around it. My only complaint: the background design behind the text prints slightly gray on our printer, which you only notice if you’re looking. Minor.
Color the ‘Live in Love’ Ephesians Sheet to Pair With Psalm 23’s Verse 6
Verse 6 of Psalm 23 closes with “I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever” – and this Ephesians 5 design about living in love sits comfortably alongside that promise when you’re building a Scripture unit. I used both in the same Sunday school lesson and the kids made a connection between love and dwelling that I hadn’t planned. Nine minutes in. They surprised me.
The design is spare – mostly lettering, minimal illustration – which means the coloring goes fast and you end up with something that looks intentional rather than chaotic. Eli colored his in all blue because “blue is calm like still waters” and I did not correct him because honestly, good theology.
Print ‘God is Love’ Verse Sheets for Psalm 23 Sunday School Memory Work
This one is from the same graphic family as the Ephesians print above, and I bought the bundle so I have both. The 1 John 4:16 text – “God is love and whoever lives in love lives in God” – pairs with Psalm 23’s shepherd theme because both are about security. I explained this to my Sunday school class. They mostly wanted to know if God is also love when their sibling is being mean.
Practical answer: print this in a two-sheet session alongside Psalm 23:1 so kids are holding both at once. The design has a soft illustrated border that my daughter called “swoopy” and proceeded to color only the swoopy parts, leaving the text white. Looks intentional. Framed beautifully.
Color the 1 John 4:8 ‘God is Love’ SVG Card Alongside Psalm 23 Sheep Craft
The SVG version gives you clean scaling – print this at any size from bookmark to poster and it doesn’t pixelate. That’s the practical difference here, and it matters if you’re doing a bulletin board display alongside a Psalm 23 sheep craft, which I did once and it looked genuinely good. My printer runs 8.5×11 max but even scaled up it stayed crisp.
The text layout is simple enough that my three-year-old could color without losing the verse underneath, which is harder to achieve than it sounds. She used pink for every letter because pink is her current answer to everything. The card came out looking sweet. We hung it next to the sheep.
Print ‘A Friend Loves at All Times’ Card Kids Give After Psalm 23 Lesson
Proverbs 17:17 and Psalm 23 share the same warmth, and this design works as a take-home card for a friendship-and-faith Sunday school lesson. The verse is rendered in clean hand-lettering style – not too ornate – and the surrounding illustration is minimal enough that coloring it takes under ten minutes, which is the realistic window you have before someone needs water or a bathroom break.
I printed twenty of these for a class of twelve because someone always needs a second one. Or crumples the first. Or gives it to a sibling at pickup. Print extras. The file is clean and the text is large enough that even the three-to-four crowd can follow along while you read it out loud.
Color the Bird Illustration Sheet to Teach Psalm 23’s Paths of Righteousness
Birds singing of God’s goodness maps directly to Psalm 23’s “paths of righteousness” – I made this connection in Sunday school and one kid said “birds know where to go” with total confidence, which is now a thing I think about. This design has several illustrated birds with the “sing of the goodness of God” text woven between them.
The art is detailed – feathers have individual lines, branches are layered – which makes it the most satisfying to color slowly but the least practical for a group of twenty children who are using chunky crayons. Best for home, one child, rainy afternoon. Nora spent forty minutes on hers. Said she wanted to do every feather a different color. She almost did.
Color a ‘Fear Not’ Psalm 23 Valley Sheet Kids Keep in Their Backpack
“Faith over fear, the Lord is on my side” ties directly to walking through the valley in verse 4, and this design is the one I print wallet-size for kids to actually carry. Fold to 2×3 and it fits in a uniform pocket or a backpack zipper compartment. Eli keeps his. He showed it to his teacher during a test day, which I hope was spiritually helpful rather than distracting.
The design is bold – thick lettering, strong contrast – which means it survives being folded and unfolded a few dozen times without losing readability. One small flag: the “fear” text is large and might come across intense out of context, so give it a thirty-second explanation before handing it to a six-year-old heading into something stressful.
Print the Funny ‘Bless the Lord Oh My Soul’ Sheet for Psalm 23 Wrap-Up
This one is labeled funny SVG and it earns it – the design has an illustration that leans slightly chaotic in a way my husband immediately recognized as his spiritual aesthetic. We used it as the last activity in a Psalm 23 unit because you need something that releases the energy. Kids colored it faster than anything else on this list. My three-year-old didn’t look up until she was done.
The humor is dry, not silly, which means it lands with adults in the room too. My husband printed it for his youth group teens without the coloring prompt – just as a card – and three of them asked for extras. The SVG resolution holds at 11×14 if you want a classroom display piece. It looks genuinely good big.
Color and Iron On the ‘Made to Worship’ Psalm 23 Praise Design to a Shirt
“Made to worship” sits at the heart of Psalm 23’s closing verses about dwelling in God’s house, and this design turns that verse-feeling into an iron-on transfer project. I did this with Nora on a Saturday – I will not say it went smoothly. I will say we now have a shirt and she wears it to church and people comment on it.
Iron-on instructions are not included in the file, so look those up separately based on your transfer paper brand. Print mirrored if you’re using a home iron-on sheet – I learned this the hard way on attempt one. The design has bold enough linework that it holds through a wash, at least through the four we’ve done so far. Good saturated ink coverage helps.
A Few Last Thoughts
We keep coming back to Psalm 23 because it works on kids in a way you don’t have to engineer. You don’t have to explain the still waters part for it to land. My six-year-old, Eli, started calling a rough day at school “a dark valley day” and I nearly cried in the pickup line. That’s what happens when a verse lives in a house long enough – it becomes their language.
For the printables: two-page bundles give you backup when the first sheet gets crumpled. Run a test page at 80% on your printer before committing to a stack of twenty, especially the darker designs. Card-format files work better when you print on cardstock and score the fold with a butter knife rather than scissors. If you’re buying for Sunday school, download once and print as many times as you need – none of these are single-use.
My honest order of operations: coloring pages go first, because they buy you time. Verse cards go home with kids. Anything iron-on becomes a shirt-making project for a rainy Saturday that you somehow end up supervising alone while your husband is at youth group. All of it is worth it. Print the shepherd. Print the green pastures. Let your kid color one word and abandon it for a bug outside. It will still be teaching them something when they wander back.
More Bible Printables for Kids
- Printable Psalms and Proverbs for Kids: Coloring Pages, Bookmarks, and Prayer Cards (2026)
- Printable Prayer Cards for Kids (Bedtime, Backpack, Sunday)
- Sunday School Craft Printables My Class Begs For
- Christian Wall Art for Kids' Rooms We Actually Framed
Frequently Asked Questions
What Psalm 23 activities are included in this set for kids?
The collection centers on Psalm 23, blending coloring pages, verse cards, and other hands-on activities around the Shepherd theme. Working through the psalm in different formats helps kids absorb its comforting imagery. Pairing the activities with reading the psalm aloud deepens the connection.
What ages can use Psalm 23 printable activities?
The mix spans preschool coloring through elementary verse work, so the same passage suits a range of ages. In a family or class you can hand each child the piece that fits their level. Glance at the preview to match the activity to your youngest learner.
How do I download and print this Psalm 23 set?
After purchase you download the PDF to your device, then print the pages you want on standard letter paper. Keep the file saved so you can reprint favorites anytime. Printing the coloring pages in black-and-white draft mode saves ink since kids add the color.