Illustrating the Word of God as you teach

As a trained elementary teacher, and visual learner, illustrations make the text come alive.  But often it is hard to find realistic images for many Bible lessons.  So I thought I'd share some of my great finds.

I must give credit to Debbie Jackson, whose website has been a favorite of mine for years!  But as I've been guiding teachers through the Old and New Testament for K or 1st grade students last year and this year, she's become my mentor and hero!   She has realistic but drawn images of many stories that she shares.   And in the past year or two, she links to sweetpublishing.com that has provided these images with free license as long as you credit them!

http://www.biblefunforkids.com/  is Debbies website and she has lessons on much of the Bible for preschool, elementary, and early elementary ages, as well as Wednesday night groups and VBS.  And she is my kind of gal- she teaches her kids the Bible!  With hands on learning, lapbooks, bulletin boards, and she is generous and shares printables she has created.   I am so thankful that I don't have to start from scratch. 

Her visuals from sweetpublishing, have led me to these other websites.

http://www.freebibleimages.org/

You can print a story (I print two images per page and laminate for kids to hold) you can print the notes and a script of the story (like a powerpoint page), you can use as a powerpoint or in your own powerpoint.  Licensed for use for free.  

It has photo versions (lifelike), cartoon, manga, there are maps, etc.   

This website's images are put into the free bible site, but some may find this source easier to select a few pictures.   But there are more images here- than are in the already made into stories page. 

 http://pub.distantshores.org/resources/illustrations/sweet-publishing/

And this site created this video option: https://unfoldingword.org/stories/

And the big plus is- you can get many languages through this website for the text or audio- so for those teaching in other languages or ESL.  Could be a great tool. 

We just did Jesus Walks on Water, and this is the video that is made from images from Sweet Publishing, and can be watched in a bunch of languages.  

Here is a link to ALL the images in the book of Matthew found on sweetpublishing

Here's one example:

I love that Free Bible Images lists ALL the references for a story they have put together, and that you can download all the images at once, and a storyplanner with a retelling and space for your own notes on the story as well.  Plus it an be a pdf, powerpoint, keynote, etc. format.  Plus the story images are so different and from so many resources. 

Here's Matthew there and on the right side, you find Jesus walks on water or calms a storm.  Four different publishers have images.

Other images from other publishers and other stories...

Here is the link to all of  Bible Fun for Kids lessons on Jesus Walks on Water lessons.