So I reviewed this book on June 1, 2020. But I was able to read it aloud to children ages 2-6 in our series on the book of Acts a few weeks ago. And I fell in love even more with this particular book because it hooks the kids with visuals, and repetition into the clear gospel message or the Good News from the book of Acts. So I used the copy of the book images from thegoodbook website that can be purchased, they are still free today!
As we've studied Acts, once we taught the ascension of Jesus to prepare His Kingdom, Pentecost, and the birth of the Church, Peter and the Lame man walking, Peter and Cornelius dream, focused on the Holy Spirit's arrival for a season, then introduced Saul-Paul, and the Good News shared in jail, with this book.
This book not only teaches the story from the book of Acts 16. If you click on that link, you can hear the author Bob Hartman read it, and oh my, he does it so well, better than me? well he does skip parts, but he's so good, you want to hear the whole book! It ends with "you can tell people about Jesus too!" and I had not emphasized this aspect of the book when I reviewed it a year ago. But I tell you, as one who has spent the past five months teaching ages 2-6 children about the book of Acts (with a month off talking about Easter). This book was the perfect transition to the real message for all of us, that comes throughout the book of Acts, sharing the Good News- the Gospel!
It brings images to the gospel story, and a beautiful rhyming, easy to memorize phrase that makes the message of Good News, easy to repeat. On this first image below- I added a crown image because when I teach the littles, we talk about King Jesus or Jesus Our King, all the time- and we put our hands on our head with our fingers up to make a crown, and have an action to go with it. Kids are active learners. We also put our hands together and make wings that fly for the Holy Spirit (dove) symbol.
This image reappears throughout the book- mostly with the phrase above, but toward the end, it also has the verse from Acts 16:31
So you can get the full idea.... here are some clips I pulled out of the book images, that thegoodbook company sells for those in ministry.
Did that help you catch a pattern? Do you think after seeing this throughout the book, and the teacher commenting on the images, little children would have a good ability to explain that the good news is: Jesus died on the cross for our sins, rose again so that we can have eternal life, and sent us the Holy Spirit to be our Helper? I'm telling you. With this as my jumping off point, and then several of the other gospel books that I have shared on the blog, my 2-6 year old kids who have attended little church or children's church. Know the Gospel well. I share what I built from this set of images to repeat and play games with in my next post!
So thankful to partner with the goodbook company and review their books, I had been buying them regularly and still do! Happy 30th anniversary Good Book Company, your books are some of my very favorite ways to teach the truth to littles!
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