Review: The Beginners Bible Activity and Coloring Books

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Not longer after I finished the ABCJLM Bible Coloring Sheets Workbook, I received two coloring books in the mail from Zonderkidz. My heart fell thinking I had wasted all of my energy and resources for something that was available in mass production.

The Beginner’s Bible Super-Duper, Mighty, Jumbo Activity Book and Coloring Book coincide with The Beginner’s Bible, which is our favorite preschool Bible and suggested on the ABCJLM curriculum. I like the illustrations and really appreciate the way the authors have simplified, without altering, the Bible stories.

The Activity and Coloring Books both contain illustrations from The Beginner’s Bible making the characters recognizable to the little ones. This is a really cool aspect especially if your family has read through The Beginner’s Bible several times like we have.

Jumbo Activity Book contains everything from mazes, dot-to-dots, word puzzles, matching games, to writing activities and drawing prompts. Basically the activities that you would expect to see in all preschool activity books except with a Biblical twist. And when they say “jumbo,” they mean JUMBO. This books has 382 pages making it three to five times larger than most activity books.

The Coloring Book contains chronological Bible coloring sheets using the same characters as The Beginner’s Bible. The last approximately 1/10th of the book contains coloring sheets highlighting various characters in the Bible. Again, this book is very large with 364 pages.

In all honesty, these books are really cool. They would be a great asset to your child’s Bible and learning time. My children have been pushing me to write this review so that they can get their crayons on them.

But there are two things that I was disappointed in.

#1 – Detail & Being Age Appropriate
This is my number one gripe with almost all coloring books and the reason why I worked so hard to create the ABCJLM Bible Coloring Sheets Workbook for the ABCJLM curriculum. Toddlers and preschoolers can not handle the detail in the drawing. They need large areas to learn how to color and stay in the lines. While some of the coloring sheets in these books are simple, most are not. This increases the age appropriateness to elementary instead of the age three that is printed on the book. Yes, any child can scribble on the sheets, but to use these books as a toddler and preschool learning tool the level of detail is too high.

#2 – Double-sided Pages

Like almost all coloring books, the pages are printed front and back to give you more options to color. Unfortunately, if you like to use the coloring sheets for flannelgraph or to post on the wall, you are losing out on half of the book because of the double-sided pages.

Overall, Zonderkidz has created a great product and at a great price if you are looking for something to keep your child busy doing and coloring.

How do you use Bible coloring sheets with your child?