As most teachers and other Christian children’s ministry workers know, the challenge of working within specific time allotments can create some challenges. Having too much or two little material to fill class time can send a teacher scrambling for something more for the students to do or trying to figure out how to change the daily agenda to make sure all of the material is covered. This can be stressful.
Most Bible curriculum have a weekly lesson plan which includes a theme, scripture references, a Bible passage or story, discussion questions, and other activities to reinforce the basic lesson. These daily plans are great because they give the teacher a structured plan to help organize the lesson. It’s important for the teacher to make the most out of the time he/she has, and good curriculum helps accomplish this task.
Curriculum that includes a variety of activities allows the teacher the freedom to choose those activities that will work best for his/her class. If the teacher has several choices of activities it may be difficult for him/her to choose between them. However, having extra activities available is a blessing and is much easier to work with than not having enough material to fill the class time.
One solution I found to help with a shortage of class activities was to plan a couple of extra activities as I planned the weekly lesson. Usually this would will my class time but just in case it didn’t, I kept a small assortment of Bible activity books and/or coloring books on hand. These books came in handy on several occasions when the children finished the lesson earlier than expected.
Bible activity books can fill empty time slots but finding one that matches the theme of your lesson–and age of your students–can be a real challenge. This is why its important to prepare your lesson ahead of time. You may have to spend hours searching through activity books or online to find something that will work. For this reason, I would like to see Bible curriculum companies create extra add-on activity books with activities that match the theme of the curriculum package.
Bible activity book publishers could provide lesson outlines and scripture passages to go along with each activity page. This would help homeschooling families that can’t afford expensive Christian textbooks for their children. It would also be a means through which Christian parents with children in public schools could teach their children Bible lessons at home. These activity books could also give stay-at-home parents some creative ideas for activities and lessons they can do at home with their children during the day. This would be a good alternative to our children spending hours in front of computers, game machines, and television sets. It would also, possibly, keep them from burning up all of their time talking on cell phones. It would help eliminate some of the questionable and evil programming that continually bombards their minds with materialism and worldly values.
Just think about how wonderful it would be if children, parents, and even whole families found Jesus Christ through the pages of a fun activity or coloring book. What a great reward!
Seeds of Christian Faith 