In the six years I’ve been teaching the older adventurers, I’ve struggled with the Bible timeline. Don’t misunderstand, I LOVE the idea of timelines. I know that kids struggle with what comes first and how it all fits together. (When I was little, I thought the cowboys came before the bible heroes. Some timelines in my life would have been so helpful in understanding that John the Baptist lived over a thousand years before John Wayne.) Seeing the value in an activity is important, but sometimes the value gets hidden by logistics.
How do we create a timeline that takes four years? What happens when an Adventurer joins for only one year? Do they have this long timeline of empty blanks? How do I join the paper together? I can overthink things with the best of them. Not to brag, but, it’s one of my more impressive skills… I started one Busy Bee class with half-size pictures ready to glue into some sort of yet-to-be-determined timeline book. Their Sunbeam teacher had other ideas about the timeline assignment. And then everything fell apart when that global pandemic showed up… I think I still have their colored pictures somewhere..
If you make the awesome timeline books or scrolls, you should keep at it. Obviously. And please SEND PICTURES! We want to learn from you. But if you struggle with the timeline too, keep reading. There are other options.
Workbooks
I have also used the workbooks and had the kids color the pictures while I read the story to them. This is the simplest option, and I’m grateful it exists. But, uh, it doesn’t help teach that Moses comes before Daniel or that Martin Luther is after Bible times, but before modern times. It’s all broken up over four years. And, for kids who hate coloring (yes, they exist), it’s an awfully big boring picture.
Can We Gamify This?
Yes, yes we can. I’ve taken all of the pictures and shrunk them down to trading card size. I use them in the same way as the bigger workbook pictures. The kids color while I read the appropriate bible story. (Use whatever Bible picture book you like – my favorite is the Jesus Storybook Bible for most of the stories. 100 Bible Stories is my backup book.) Usually, we cover one story/picture a week until they are done.
The pictures are so small, they are less intimidating for the anti-coloring crowd. However, I don’t stress about the pictures being colored perfectly or even colored at all. Our goal is that the kids learn the stories. The pictures are a tool, they aren’t the goal. Once the pictures are colored, we use the cards for a few games.
Game Ideas
Timeline – Single Player
You know when you have six kids coloring and half of them are finished before the other half has picked their second color? This game is a nice educational time filler. Use just the cards they have already been introduced to. Busy Bees will have just a couple of cards to put in order, Helping Hands will have a small stack.
Shuffle cards. Put the timeline in order. Check your answers. For more time-filling, ask the kids to tell you about the bible stories.
Timeline – Multiplayer
This is based off the history game Timeline. (The history teacher in me loves this game! Our Bible version is much much easier and faster.)
Shuffle Cards. Deal to each player. First player puts a card on the table. Each player after picks one of their cards to add to the correct place on the timeline. Unlike the “real” game, this one really isn’t competitive – there just aren’t enough cards to be all that challenging. But even easy games are a good review. When an Adventurer misplaces a card, I usually encourage them to try again – cause we’re not that into competition in my club.
Charades
I didn’t think my Helping Hands would want to play charades, and I tried to skip this game. I was wrong! They were very excited to play, and wished we had more time to play Bible Charades longer. Obviously, you don’t need playing cards to play bible charades, but I have found a few advantages to using them. It makes it easier for kids to pick just one story – they act out the story from the card they randomly picked. The card will remind a child who is less familiar with the bible which story it is. And, it helps the guessers since the selection of stories is smaller and are ones they’ve been learning about in Adventurers.
Construction
Ideally, print on cardstock. You can precut them or wait until the cards are finished to cut them apart. Laminate after they are colored, if desired. (As much as I adore my laminator, I have not gone the laminating route for the kids’ cards.) You’ll find the free pdf at the end of this post.
An extra set or several depending on your class size are handy for you to have for group activities. Color them, if you like to color, or leave them black and white – both are great options!
Storage
The Bible cards aren’t actually for trading (although, you could probably do that..), they are trading card size. Which means they fit in trading card sleeves. The kids keep theirs in trading cards sleeves in their notebook at the church. I rubberband my (uncolored) set and keep it in my bag ready to pull out when we have some extra time or need a game (such as while finishing the Bible II award).
Artwork used by permission of the North American Division.
(Thanks, AdventSource, for your help and encouragement on this project.)
Special thanks to my favorite Helping Hand for loaning his timeline cards to me for this post.
How do you handle the timeline with your Adventurers? If you use these cards, could you do me a favor and come back and comment about how they worked for your club? I’d love to hear about your experience.
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