Art & the Bible for Children teaches Bible stories with drawing activities supplied to reinforce the stories. While children are told to draw certain people or things in response to each story, there is little instruction in how to draw since the primary purpose is not to teach specific drawing skills.
Children ages four and up might listen to the stories and complete the drawing activities. However, some activities such as filling in the rungs on Jacob’s Ladder will appeal only to younger children. At the same time, some activities such as drawing a donkey might be much more challenging. However, children are given instructions, sample illustrations, and drawing prompts to make it easy to complete each assignment working with a fine point black drawing pen and colored pencils.
While the drawing activities are presented in the 275-page, hardcover textbook with the stories, you will not want children to draw directly on the glossy pages of the text. The book comes with a set of lesson (drawing) cards printed on card stock. Cards have drawings to be completed, squares to fill in, and drawings to copy, each accompanied by drawing prompts such as, “Draw Zacchaeus in a tree. You can either draw him standing or sitting. Draw your picture in the figure box. Use your colored pencils and, when finished, outline your tree and Zacchaeus with your black pen.” These cards might be reproduced on other paper so that each child has his or her own.
The Bible stories are retellings of the most popular stories, presented in chronological order from Creation to Revelation. Each story is followed by “discussion questions” that primarily ask only for recall of information and occasionally ask for personal responses. Stories are illustrated with full-color reproductions of children’s artwork by children of all ages and skill levels. These illustrations should be an encouragement and inspiration for children to try their hand at their own illustrations.
I think this should work well with the whole family even though the Bible stories are simplified retellings. If you use this with the whole family, you might allow older children to come up with their own ideas for some of the drawing assignments that seem to simple.
You can purchase preprinted packs of the lesson cards, copy those from the original set that comes with the book, or purchase a downloadable PDF file.
