An Illustrated Earth: Celebrating God’s Creation is Illustrated Children’s Ministry’s first curriculum. We are excited about putting together a theologically rich, relevant, and creative children’s ministry resource. An Illustrated Earth is flexible, adaptable, and fun, and requires little or no prep for your teachers. Here are some photos that people have been sharing on Instagram using the #anillustratedearth hashtag. Click on the dots to see more photos.
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An Illustrated Earth helps children to remember to celebrate God’s creation while they enjoy the outdoors. They will be able to read Bible stories, engage with the stories creatively, reflect on questions that will use their imaginations, and work on a coloring project that can be done individually (on 8.5″ x 11″ coloring sheets) or as a group (on large 36″ x 24″ coloring posters). The coloring sheets come included in the price of the digital downloadable curriculum, and the coloring posters are sold separately. You can order your posters here and order your curriculum here.
An Illustrated Earth’s Scope & Sequence
An Illustrated Earth consists of three modules, each with four lessons. Each lesson features a matching coloring design for the coloring sheets and large coloring posters.
Module 1: Water Stories
- Week 1: Genesis 1:6–10: Separation of the Water (download sample lesson)
- Week 2: Exodus 14:15–31: Parting of the Red Sea
- Week 3: Matthew 3:13–17: Baptism of Jesus
- Week 4: Mark 4:35–41: Calming of the Storm
Module 2: Food & Plant Stories
- Week 1: Exodus 16: Manna & Quail
- Week 2: Mark 6:31–44: Feeding of the 5,000
- Week 3: Leviticus 25:1–7: The Sabbatical Year
- Week 4: Mark 4:1–9: Parable of the Sower
Module 3: Animal Stories
- Week 1: Genesis 1:20–25: Creation of Animals
- Week 2: Numbers 22:22–35: Balaam and the Lord’s Messenger
- Week 3: Jonah: Jonah and the Big Fish
- Week 4: Luke 15:1–7: Parable of the Lost Sheep
We have a sample lesson available for the first week, “Separation of the Water.” You can download the sample lesson here.
An Illustrated Earth Coloring Posters (printed on high-quality paper)
Each lesson in An Illustrated Earth comes with a coloring design, and you can purchase the large 36″ x 24″ coloring posters to be used in your classrooms by clicking here. Like our posters in the past, you can order just the physical posters, just the digital image files, or both the physical posters and the digital image files. The digital image files are especially worthwhile if you have your own printer or if you know you’re going to want more than one copy of each poster for your classrooms.
Like the curriculum, it makes the most sense to order all twelve posters together as a package, as that is the best deal available. However, you can also purchase the poster sets for each module separately (while supplies last).
New Approach to Coloring Designs: We have discovered that sometimes the details people love in our large coloring posters don’t translate as well for younger children in the 8.5″ × 11″ versions of the posters. So for this set of twelve coloring sheets, we created two designs of each, which you can see below.
- Simple Version: While both designs share the same basic artwork, this 8.5″×11″ version is a less-detailed version of the larger design used for the poster. It still includes the words and enough of the image to get an idea of what is happening in the story – but is easier for younger children to color in.
- More Complex Version: These 8.5″ × 11″ sheets have the exact same design as the 36″ × 24″ posters.
You can see the differences between the designs in the illustrations below:
An Illustrated Earth for Families
We also have a resource called An Illustrated Earth for Families. This resource can be used as a companion to the curriculum or as a standalone resource for families to use (we have a special price of just $10 that is for individual families who want to purchase the resource).
The lessons from the church curriculum have been edited to serve as simple and easy devotions that a family can do together, and the questions are geared for the family. There are also some additional activities in the family edition that are not included in the church curriculum.