Curriculum

Sample Lesson from An Illustrated Earth: Celebrating God’s Creation

We are excited to be able to share with you a sample lesson from our curriculum, An Illustrated Earth: Celebrating God’s Creation. In the lesson, you’ll find some introductory comments, the lesson, our Illustrated Story Cards for the lesson, as well as the two 8.5×11 versions of the coloring posters that will be included with each lesson. You can download the sample lesson here.

This is a curriculum that we hope will require little to no effort on the part of the person planning it (other than making some photocopies and getting crayons/markers out), and can be led by anyone without any necessary time for preparation. Whether you’re looking to give your regular Sunday School teachers the summer off, or just want something that won’t require any planning on their part, An Illustrated Earth is going to be a great product for you.

Each of the twelve lessons is broken up into five main components: Gathering, Story Time, Imagining Together, Coloring and Closing.

Gathering

Since much of the lesson is focused on listening, discussing and coloring, this gathering time gives you a chance to lead an activity that might be more active. We provide you with a sample gathering activity, but you are welcome to come up with your own that suits the children’s needs and temperaments in your ministry. Though this doesn’t need to be overly involved, it’s a good opportunity for movement and for the children to introduce themselves if that is necessary in your context.

Story Time

Story-Time This is the time set aside for becoming familiar with the biblical story for that week. There are a variety of ways you can introduce the kids to the story. First, we have provided you with a paraphrase of the passage that has been written specifically for children.

Second, we provide you with that same paraphrase broken up into a script. If you have some older children in your group, this would be a great opportunity to allow them to stand up and act out the story. Depending on the story, you may choose to have some of the younger children act out the story while it’s narrated and directed by the older children or teachers.

Finally, we have created Illustrated Story Cards for each lesson. These story cards each have a very simple line drawing that depicts one part of the story. The goal is to offer children the opportunity to put their cards in the proper sequence, matching the illustrations with the story in scripture they’ve just heard.

Imagining Together

This is not so much a time to make sure they got the information or facts of the story, but rather, an opportunity for the children to share what stood out to them and what they imagined when they listened to the story. Depending on the time you have set aside for this lesson time, you may choose to do this portion while coloring the poster or sheets, or you may want to spend a little time imagining with the children first, and then move over to the poster.

Coloring

If you purchased our Illustrated Earth Coloring Posters, you will have a poster that corresponds with each lesson. Each poster has a word, phrase or portion of the biblical passage incorporated into the design.

Coloring is an opportunity to continue talking about the story, while asking questions and seeing where the conversation takes you. Because many of the story’s elements are integrated into the coloring design, it may be fun to encourage the children to search out as many symbols as they can that communicate an aspect of the story.

If you didn’t purchase the large coloring posters, you can use this as time for individual coloring with the included coloring sheets. We have provided you with both the design of the poster, and a simplified coloring sheet for your younger children.

Closing Prayer

Whether you simply read the prayer, or have the children repeat after you – use this as a chance to “close” your time together as you wait for parents to come pick up their children. As you approach the end of your time together, this is a great short ritual to do with the children; it creates a sense of community and preparation as they enter back into the world.

Sample Lesson Available

We hope you’ll take some time to look through our Sample Lesson and share it with your friends. The curriculum is available for immediate purchase and download on our store here.

You can download the sample lesson here.

How Churches Plan to Use the Illustrated Earth Coloring Posters & Curriculum

Adam Walker Cleaveland Leave a Comment

Earlier this week, we began accepting pre-orders for our Illustrated Earth Coloring Posters. Since then, we’ve had almost 50 churches pre-order their posters for this summer. Since we had so many early-adopters, we figured that many of them must have had some specific ideas of how they would use the posters and we wanted to share their ideas with all of you.

Below are just a few of the responses we received from churches and we’re excited to see how people are already dreaming up ways to use these posters that we didn’t even think about. And we especially love the intergenerational focus of some of these ideas.

Hopefully these ideas might inspire you to try out the curriculum and coloring posters this summer. If you have other ideas – we’d love for you to share them in the comments section below. And if you haven’t pre-ordered your posters yet, you can do so here.

JesusBaptism — An example of a colored version of our coloring poster of the Baptism of Jesus

Colorful Reminders of God-colors

We are so excited to use our Illustrated Earth Coloring Posters this summer. Our summer theme is “Celebrating God-colors” taken from The Message translation of Matthew 5:14, “You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world.” The Illustrated Earth curriculum fits perfectly with our theme.

We will be using the curriculum and the coloring posters in an intergenerational Bible study on Sunday mornings. Our children, youth, and adults will gather together to learn from the Bible and each other. As we have shared our plans, it’s clear that our adults are as excited about the giant coloring posters as the children are!

Each Sunday as we finish, the poster will be hung in our foyer, so that by the end of the summer, bright and colorful reminders of the God-colors found in creation, Scripture, and each other will be everywhere as we enter our sanctuary.

Melissa Scott
Associate Pastor
Colonial Avenue Baptist Church – Roanoke, VA

Intergenerational Sunday School

In the past, our church has cancelled children’s Sunday School in the summer. This was in part to give our teachers a break, but we also didn’t have very many young families that would attend Sunday School in the summer. This past year, however, we have a class of young adults that have children and they want to keep meeting all summer long! Which means we need something for their children as well.

In addition to the coloring posters, we will be using the An Illustrated Earth curriculum as well, which will allow for children to engage with the stories on a deeper level. We plan on letting the whole church family know that we are offering this, and look forward to having some others join us, making this an intergenerational event. We are excited about this creative option for Sunday School that will allow children and adults alike to explore their creative sides together.

Kristen Koger
Pastoral Resident
Tabernacle Baptist Church – Richmond, VA

Using Posters in Many Different Ways

We first used Adam’s coloring pages at Advent, with children, youth, and adults (at a Session meeting couldn’t wait to get coloring!). We also used the Family Advent packet and the wandering Wise Men were a hit!

Then we ordered the Lent drawings with the intention of using them, but we went with a theme for Lent that didn’t incorporate the drawings. No problem! We bought the digital files so we have them to use whenever we need them. I went on a weekend retreat with a friend and brought copies of the drawings for us to color as part of our relaxation. She ended up coloring “Believe” and turned it into a Confirmation gift for her confirmands (you may have seen the picture from Trinity Presbyterian Church in Butler, PA). Inspiration!

We just pre-ordered the summer packet. To be honest, I don’t know how we’ll use them yet, but I know that we will. It may be for quiet time in Vacation Bible School, a summer night with youth, personal time on Senior High Mission Trip, or group coloring on a Sunday morning. Adam’s work is always inspirational, meaningful, and fun!

Rev. Meg Rift
Director of Christian Educational Ministries
Fair Oaks Presbyterian Church – Oak Park, IL

A colored version of one of our coloring posters

Coloring on the Beach

I am very excited to introduce your water stories series to the children I teach at our 8am summer beach service as well as to the children who come to our 10am service. We will share our finished creations with you when we’re done.

Rosemary Lamie
First Congregational Church of Greenwich – Old Greenwich, CT

Coloring at Camp

Hi amazing Illustrated Ministry Team! Thank you for the contribution your work is making to the wider good and to the big work of nurturing children’s faith and spirituality. It is a joy to be able to draw on your gifts to deepen our ministry here in the United Churches of Langley, and in Camp Spirit.

The Illustrated Earth posters will be a part of our support for children and families through the summer this year. We have been holding mid week, multi-age worship times in past summers. I picture the colouring posters being a feature of those gatherings as one of our stations.

During camp at Camp Spirit, we have a time of quieter engagement in a variety of spiritual practises for children kindergarten through grade 6 – and their leaders; the Illustrated Earth posters will be a wonderful option for contemplative practice for campers. Thanks again for all you are doing!

Allison Rennie
United Churches of Langley – Langley, British Columbia, Canada

Combined Classes

In the summer, we combine our pre-K and K-1 children’s church classes and I plan to use your Illustrated Earth curriculum and coloring posters in that setting.

Jill Winter
Director of Children’s Ministries
Centenary United Methodist Church – Danville, KY

Use Illustrated Earth Posters with Cokesbury’s Surf Shack VBS

Adam Walker Cleaveland Leave a Comment

Cokesbury’s Surf Shack VBS is most likely one of the most popular VBS curriculums available for the summer of 2016. Cokesbury's Surf Shack VBS In addition to Cokesbury’s Surf Shack VBS, Group’s VBS options are also viewed as the a standard VBS curriculum that churches across the theological spectrum use.

I’ve worked at churches that have used these types of VBS curriculums before, and I am aware of what the appeal can be about programs like Cokesbury’s Surf Shack VBS. You get everything you need to run the program for the week. They often come with videos, shirts, all the appropriate marketing materials you’ll need, original music (often including videos of kids dancing and teaching the music)…they can be quite appealing.

Depending on the size of your church and the number of children you’re used to having come to your summer VBS program, Cokesbury’s Surf Shack VBS might be more than you need. But if you are planning on using Cokesbury’s Surf Shack VBS, we have made a very interesting discovery here at Illustrated Ministry. Actually, someone told us about it at a conference we were at last week, and I’m excited to share that with you.

As you know, An Illustrated Earth: Celebrating God’s Creation, is our summer product that we created primarily for summer Sunday School classes, but as I’ve said before, I think An Illustrated Earth could also be adapted to fit into a VBS program your church may be trying to develop. You won’t get a box with everything you need to run a VBS program, like you might with a Group VBS or Cokesbury’s Surf Shack VBS. But it will provide you with some themes, stories, a lesson and a giant coloring poster.

An Illustrated Earth is broken up into three modules, and Module 1 is Water Stories. Last week someone told us that Cokesbury’s theme for this summer was Surf Shack: Catch the Wave of God’s Amazing Love. I thought it sounded like a fun theme – and then I looked at the five Bible stories they’ll be using that week for Cokesbury’s Surf Shack VBS.

Bible Stories from Cokesbury’s Surf Shack VBS

These are the stories they are covering during the week:

Session 1: Genesis 1: Creation Story
Session 2: Exodus 2: Miriam Cares for Moses
Session 3: Matthew 3: Baptism of Jesus
Session 4: Luke 8: Jesus Calms the Storm
Session 5: John 21: Breakfast on the Beach

Now, take a look at the stories that we had chosen for Module 1: Water Stories, before we had heard anything at all about Cokesbury’s Surf Shack VBS:

Week 1: Genesis 1: Creation Story
Week 2: Exodus 14: Parting of the Red Sea (not the same story, but still a Moses story)
Week 3: Matthew 3: Baptism of Jesus
Week 4: Mark 4: Jesus Calms the Storm

As you can see, 3 out of the 5 stories from Cokesbury’s Surf Shack VBS are the same stories we are covering in our water module. So if you are doing Surf Shack this summer, and are looking for an additional activity to have as part of your program for the week, our large coloring posters would be a great option.

Below you can see the poster designs for the three stories that Surf Shack is also covering in their curriculum:

Order Your Posters Today

If you think these posters would work with how you’re using Cokesbury’s Surf Shack VBS, you can get the posters for Module 1: Water Stories in two different formats here.