A Book Review and a Bible Overview

Thinking about the new creation with a tuff tray of balloons and blocks

 We started a Bible overview series of sensory stories in early 2020. I grieved the many Sundays in 2020 where we had to put it on hold and rejoiced in 2021 when we finally completed it. 

We based this series on 'The Garden, The Curtain and The Cross'. I'd come across the paperback version previously and thought that it looked like a good resource but was especially excited to see that it had also been published as a board book. As lots of us know finding resources to bring the gospel story to life for children and young people with additional needs isn't often easy. While 'The Garden, The Curtain and The Cross' hasn't been written (as far as I'm aware) with children and young people with additional needs in mind and hasn't been marketed for this group specifically, there's a number of reasons why I really enjoyed using it in this ministry

• It doesn't feel 'baby-ish'. It uses the same illustrations and design as the paperback version aimed at 3-6 year olds and wouldn't look out of place in any mixed-ability primary school aged setting. It doesn't portray adult Bible characters as toddlers or worse babies, my pet peeve of books aimed at small children!
• It won't rip!
• It's beautifully illustrated and this helps to inspire sensory elements to incorporate into these stories. For example the beautiful pictures of the garden helped to inspire creating a sensory garden activity with fake grass, flowers and brightly coloured toy food
• It simultaneously manages to cover the entire gospel story from across the Bible while easily breaking down into smaller stories relating to specific events e.g. the creation story and the Christmas story (see below for how we structured our series)
• Mostly importantly it is faithful to the gospel. The text is slightly simplified from the original paperback version but the original message is not lost. I think theres a danger when trying to make Bible stories accessible that some of the power of the gospel is diluted and we risk missing out on being able to share how great Jesus' grace is. This book avoids this and presents a simple but authentic retelling of all the elements of the gospel story

We structured our Bible overview into the following 5 sessions, for each session I've included a sensory story plan and a quote from 'The Garden, The Curtain and The Cross'.

Session 1: Creation Story

‘In the beginning God made people. He made a wonderful garden for them’

Session 2: Leaving the garden/building the temple

‘The people couldn’t live with God anymore…God came to live among people in a special building’

Session 3: The Christmas story

‘One day God came to live in the world as a person. He was called Jesus.’

Session 4: The Easter story

‘Jesus died on a cross. It was very sad…Jesus came back to life. He lives in heaven forever’

Session 5: A new creation

‘We can live with God forever in his wonderful place’

We'd used some of these stories before and I've published some of them on here before. It was great to be able to run them as a series though and to know that we'd been able to share the entire gospel story with the children and young people. Do let me know in the comments if you've tried any of these stories out or if you've found any other creative ways to share the gospel story with children and young people with additional needs, I'd love to hear from you!