I’ve you’re not familiar with Grapevine studies, the idea is, in short, that you work your way through sections of the Bible by drawing stick figures to remember what you’re studying. This helps learn the chronology of the story, and breaks down story elements in an easily understandable way.
New traceables allow little kids to join in!
We’ve done these studies before, but not since the little ones joined the family. I was thinking I’d need to wait til they were bigger, but Grapevine has recently expanded the age range to include a traceable book so that even preschoolers can participate.
My 4-year-old didn’t know what I meant when I said we’d “trace” the stick people (and actually, I had to explain what “stick people” were, too!), but once I showed him, he did a great job. In fact, it’s hard to tell his from the older kids’ drawings!
Look at how hard he concentrated on doing his best:
I knew I’d use the traceables for my preschooler, but decided to use these pages for first-grader Scout as well. Kathryn used the blank pages, but liked being able to refer to what was on the traceable pages to see what her drawings were “supposed to” look like — although kids can be creative as they want with these. I think Scout could do the blank pages, but she enjoys the traceable pages and I think we’ll stick with these for now.
Hint: colored pencils make it more fun, and you can draw each person in the story a different color to more easily differentiate who’s who as the stick-figuring goes on.
