The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones

I'm a big fan of this Bible storybook called The Jesus Storybook Bible. I know I've mentioned it before, but just to reiterate, the premise is that it points every story, starting from Creation, to the coming of Jesus. Usually, as you learn the random Bible stories as a child, you aren't putting together in your mind that this has anything to do with the reason for Christ coming. But after reading these Old Testament stories, you see how a seemingly obscure story like the tower of Babel relates to our need for a saviour.

So anyway, I've been reading through this book with the 3-6 year old Sunday school class at church and they seem to get a kick out of it. It has beautiful illustrations that keep them interested. The first one is, of course the story of Creation.

Forever, my older sister and I have said that we wish someone would make a real curriculum for Sunday school out of the Jesus Storybook Bible, but since there isn't one, I have just made up a little junior-sized one for Sammy's class. All we do is read the story, say a little action rhyme and/or songs, and then do a craft.

When I was in preschool, a lady named Gay Reuschen from our church made this craft with me and I thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever made at that point in my life. You just make a tall tree on a piece of paper, and then decorate it around the bottom, and then fold it so that it can "grow". See the first picture how it's small? Then you unfold it and it's big. Trust me..the 4 year olds think this is practically a magic trick.

We also started learning the poem/hymn, All Things Bright and Beautiful, by Cecil Frances Alexander:

"All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful: the Lord God made them all".

The first story was creation of course, but then comes the story about The Fall. See the very deceptive Satan snake? 

And here is our finger-print version. They (or you) draw a tree trunk and then they dip their finger in paint to make the green tree, the red apples, (because you KNOW it's a proven fact that the forbidden fruit was apples!) and the slithery snake. I wrote Genesis 3.3 up on the top right corner to remind them and the parents about our story.

Next comes the Noah story. Aren't the pictures great?

So we made a big construction paper mural here...very creative don't you think? ;) But the kids did like putting the rainbow together one color at a time. There were a FEW arguments about the orders of the colors, but they still enjoyed themselves I think.  We continued reciting All Things Bright and Beautiful (with some random motions I made up) and started learning the little Bible school song Stand on a Rock, which goes:

chorus:
I’m gonna stand on the rock
I’m gonna stand on the rock
I’m gonna stand on the rock
Of God’s Word
I’m gonna try to obey
I’m gonna try to obey
I’m gonna try to obey
Obey God’s Word
(repeat)

On God’s Word (On God’s Word)
My house will stand tall (My house will stand tall)
Without God’s Word (Without God’s Word)
My house will fall (My house will fall)
(repeat chorus)

So next was Tower of Babel or, in this storybook, it's called "The Giant Staircase to Heaven". It's a funny story because it has the people all confused with their languages and accidentally calling each other names when they were trying to talk nicely since all their speech is mixed up. As you can imagine, Sammy got a kick out of that.

Here is our construction paper Tower of Babel with stairs reaching up to the clouds. Of course, when we are done with any of these construction paper/gluing projects, we let the kids color on them. So that always passes a little more time.

Next comes the story of God promising Abraham a son and promising to make him the father of a great nation.

We made this picture of the special family (complete with glitter stars) and talked about how Abraham was the great, great, great........grandfather of Jesus. Of COURSE, we had to sing Father Abraham this time along with Stand on a Rock and reciting All things bright and Beautiful.

Here's where things got tricky. Although the Flood story about Noah should be a pretty traumatizing story for kids when you think about it, it wasn't upsetting for this class because of course that story has become such a story about animals and boats for kids that the whole idea of the judgement involved loses it's power. But I was a little more timid about reading the story of Abraham offering Isaac as a sacrifice. The author handles the subject beautifully though and the kids were very relieved when the ram in the thicket was sent to save Isaac from a sure death. And of course the parallel was drawn about Jesus being like the ram that would rescue US from punishment.

So we made rams and talked about how God sent the ram to save Isaac just like he would send Jesus to save us and forgive us.

He's a cute little guy right? I'm not an artist, that's for sure, but the curly horns were funny I thought.

 So anyway, this is the construction-paper-cut-out version of an ACTUAL curriculum, but I like that the kids are working their way through the Bible and leading up to the story of the birth of Christ, which we've actually timed perfectly to come at Christmas time. I want us to have a big party for Jesus finally coming that day. So...anyone with any REAL talent want to make a curriculum for this book and send it to me? Just an idea....Aunt Marty...you're an artist!

*P.S .-I'm not sure what the laws/rules are about taking pictures of the pages of a book and posting them. They seem to do it on Amazon all the time! But if this is bad and someone wants to call me on it, I'd be happy to take them down.