Drawing the Bible; Turn Off the DVD Player

I’m speaking this week at Hartland Bible Camp in California. It’s my first time here, but I am really loving the experience. I’ll post more about the camp at the end of the week. I wanted to post a few pics about one of my favorite teaching methods… Bible Story Drawing. Besides drama, illustion, and some of my other usual techniques, for the actual Bible story segment, I am illustrating the Bible Story by drawing it as I teach it. Since the drawing gets erased each day (Actually, by my arch nemesis before the next lesson, more on that in a future post!) I take a picture to save my works of art for posterity!

Here they are, perhaps someone else might enjoy them… as you can see, my artist skills peaked around the second grade. As for the lesson content, I am covering The Nine Virtues and teaching Bible Characters that displayed them. I’ve done four so far:

Courage: Displayed by David: (Click image to see full size)

HONOR: Displayed by Young Jesus (Click image to see full size)

TRUTH: Displayed by Peter (Click image to see full size)

LOYALTY*: Displayed by Esther (Click image to see full size) *Fidelity

(All spelling errors while drawing are in fun and for audience participation and laughter… you just keep on going, you are drawing quickly!)

I love this technique because the kids enjoy it, it involves the audience because it is funny and it also gives a very unique visual. Kids are so used to video today, it is almost “high tech” and “NEW” to see someone manually draw something to illustrate, since it is just not done any more. Plus, much like ToyBox Tales, it is something they can relate to, since kids like to draw. You don’t need to be an artist to do this, because kids aren’t artist either! I’d really encourage you to try it!

Kids come up to the stage afterward to look at the drawing, and then many copy it throughout the day in their notebooks, which is reinforced learning. They are getting a visual overview of the book/story – which is a great way to learn.

I wish more teachers would find ways to get rid of the DVD player and teach in new ways that “draw” kids in. It isn’t hard, and its actually MORE effective.

LET ME CHALLENGE YOU, loose the DVD player. If you use it, limit it to NO MORE than ten minutes in your lesson. More than that, and you are honestly losing effectiveness. Kids need real people in front of them teaching. And if you can draw a stick figure, you can teach better than a DVD can. Honestly.

I will post the rest at the end of the week in a post on Kidology.org and update this post with a link to that post with much more detail on the entire lesson scope and details on the overall unit on the Nine Virtues.

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2 Comments:

  1. Karl, I’d love to have you on my team for Pictionary! Those are awesome! The one with Peter, I thought the &^!*(# bubble was the rooster at first! Made me smile.

    Great article. I look forward to seeing the other drawings.

  2. Today often times ‘old school’ is actually new school. Great article and I too enjoy drawing the stories still but I have to use the large pads of paper because the kids always want a chance to win the drawings when we are done.

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