No matter how old you are, visual aids make any story more memorable.
When it comes to Bible storytelling, people make fun of the old flannelgraphs. I realize the technology is pretty antiquated, but as a kid I loved a story told with visuals of almost any kind! Now more churches make use of video in their children’s church and Sunday school programs, and I certainly think video has its place, but real live stories told by real live people can have a powerful impact. The use of visual aids can drive the point home even better.
Sometimes we’re just lacking the necessary tools. I’m still waiting on somebody to create a complete series of Bible action figures, but until that time, I’m afraid I’m left to come up with Bible story visuals of my own!
So when I saw these at Hobby Lobby…
the creative wheels of my mind started turning.
Now these are a mere 5.25 inches tall, so if you teach children’s church in a large room to a lot of kids, these may not be easy to see, but with a smaller group or Sunday school class, or even to use at home with your own kids, these make perfect Bible story characters. And as you can see from the price on the package, these are hardly expensive. In fact, they were 50% off the day I purchased them, so I actually paid $2 for 24 stick figures. With added supplies, I can make 24 characters for well under $10
All you need is some felt in various colors, markers, and a hot glue gun.
But feel free to get more creative than that! You can add other fabrics, fur, pipe cleaners, ribbon, sequins, etc. And don’t feel like you have to be an artist or clothing designer! Bible clothing isn’t all that complicated. You can even make patterns on paper of robes, headdresses, beards, and hair, then use your patterns to cut out felt pieces in various colors.
Attach your pieces with hot glue. And don’t worry about the back! It won’t be visible for most stories anyway.
Use markers and add your faces last, just to make certain you have plenty of room for hair, beards, and headdresses. I will confess this part is easier when you have an artsy teenager who can do it for you. 🙂
The kids loved these silly little figures in our children’s church, and I can only imagine how my kids would have loved playing with them and using them to tell Bible stories in our homeschool when they were smaller.
I’m slowly growing my collection. The first characters I made were Jacob, Esau, Isaac, and Rebekah. My daughter then added Rachel and an angel to the mix. It’s easy to reuse most characters. My Esau is more unique, obviously, but an old man or woman figure can play several different roles, and the same for a young man, woman, or child. Eventually I’d love to have a large number of Bible figures, plus a modern family and even a few historical figures. These aren’t at all hard to make and this is an inexpensive project that can help kids visualize a story and absorb its message better.
I’m stilling waiting on that line of cool Bible action figures, but until then, my little visual aids are working quite nicely!
