Time and Timelines

Somebody googled "Crafts for Mark".

I'm looking at Mark 1. A prophesy. What do you do with that for children? I like time lines.

You can probably start with a child's own life when they're old enough to have memories. Kindergarten/1st Grade. Do something with seasons. Add the special things you do in class.

Use giant calendar pages with photos of special things that happen in class during your Sunday School year.

Make a visual time line of Bible stories for the wall to give kids a sense of the big picture. Leave space for the future.

Photo albums are, in a sense, visual time lines in a book. Draw pictures of the Bible stories you tell to make a "photo album" for God's family.

Create your time lines with photos or pictures instead of words, even for older kids. Maybe you want pictures of Bible story time and place or symbols instead of images of specific people given we don't know what they looked like. I leave that to your imagination.

Use individual picture of individual stories to place strategically around your room or use a long piece of shelf paper the way you would for a mural. Divide it into suitable time spans (bc and ad - sorry I'm still old school) so they fit around your room.

Make a time line of a child's own life. Add Mom and Dad. Add Grandma and Grandpa or friends the same age as parents and grandparents. Add Jesus. Then put Isaiah and his prophecy on the time line.

If you leave it up all year you can put a picture of each story you read on the time line. If you have the same basic time line for each classroom you can give the child, your church, Jesus, each Bible story and character a visual place in time over the course of your whole curriculum. The whole time line is like looking faraway without a telephoto lens. A child's life, the life of Jesus, the life of David are close-ups.

Something to play with.