The Beatitudes: An Illustrated Curriculum

The content is really good. We were looking for a curriculum that is not overly complicated, but still has solid theology to give our small team a refreshing start in the new year.

I have only used two sessions of the curriculum so far. I am appreciating the progressive theology and the creative way the curriculum teaches about the historical context of the Sermon on the Mount. One recommendation would be to use a different/easier version of the Bible when referring to the the Beattitudes (e.g., I have found The Message to be a favourite with kids).

Wonderful Resource for Worship & Sunday School
The curriculum was wonderful for a combined family worship and sunday school. We offered both an in-person outdoor service and on-line service/ss for families using the curriculum. Families could choose their participation. I also liked the focus on one story, which is very rich and similar to the rotation model for learning. We incorporated sign language into the curriculum to add more movement with a culmination of different families doing the Beatitudes the last week in our online service.

Connecting and Engaging
I used this as my first inter generational Sunday school material. We did zoom calls. I made GooglePoint slides to show verses, activity pages, and even used it to collectively make a collage of what there is enough in Gods Kingdom (cats and dogs are a must). The activities engaged the younger kids and helped the older adults think about situations differently. Kids learned “crazy” things about our adults and adults were “blown away” by kids reflections. I’m not sure how engaged parents were with take home questions.
I would highly recommend this to anyone. And I’ll probably end up using it again in the future.

An Extraordinary Resource
We just wrapped up using the Beatitudes curriculum with two different age groups at our church. The youngest participants were preschool age and the oldest were grade 6 age. We loved using this curriculum. It was easy to use with all ages and easily adapted to fir the needs of our church. We look forward to continue Illustrated Ministry as part of our church curriculum. This is a must have if you are teaching Sunday school online!

Flexible and Faithful
We, like so many church folx these days, needed something flexible to offer our families during our time of distancing. The Beatitudes curriculum offered just what we were looking for. However, even more helpful was knowing without a doubt that the material would be faithful and forward-thinking. Thank you and keep these outstanding resources coming! We need voices of hope and healing like yours in these days!

Doing online content right
This is a wonderfully do-able online curriculum. It didn't have too many steps, and we could do it in 30 minutes, which was about the attention span of the kids. I will say that The Beatitudes and the discussions were difficult for the youngest of our children, 3-6. They were mostly there to be with other kids and didn't engage with the material much. But we were together and we were talking about Jesus, and it was good. I and the parents appreciated how much justice teaching there was.

Easy Peasy!
This curriculum is nothing short of phenomenal! We have a small congregation and we are using as Sunday School program. Since we are still virtual we do it intergenerational, which has led to some really great conversations. It is a huge benefit! Our little congregation is technology challenged and so just getting on the virtual platform can be quite intimidating. But the ease of use for this curriculum is great! You can do as little or as much as you would like. You can read directly from the leader guide and do it weekly or you could expand it and get really indepth. It is really easy to work with. We also printed the family pages along with the coloring pages and we have some members that use it on their own because they lack the skills or capability to join the virtual class. It is a really great program.

A really helpful tool
I used this curriculum in fall 2020 for intergenerational faith formation. Our group meet on Zoom weekly and we sent the accompanying family coloring pages home each week. The curriculum was developed with online faith formation in mind, and it was so great to have a tool that didn't need complete re-imagining! That said, some of the activities would not have worked in our zoom setting, so we did have to change 3 or 4 of them. The theology in this is sound. All ages learned something in participating. That said, it is word-heavy for an online context where short and sweet is best!

Blessed by the Beatitudes curriculum
This is a great curriculum, I've been using it over zoom and it's worked great! I think it would also be great for in person Sunday school. It works for kiddos in preschool all the way up to 5th grade, there's something for everyone. I hope they develop more like this!

Beatitudes
This program was affordable, minimal prep time, easy to share coloring pages and family pages virtually. It was great for all ages and great for large and small groups. Thank you!

Great Curriculum for online
Great intergenerational curriculum. We used this this fall (2 sessions left to go) and those that have participated have seemed to really enjoy it! We shared the family pages on a private Facebook page and uploaded videos we created from the curriculum each week to the Facebook page (via YouTube). Again, the curriculum was easy to use, and very well written.

Great for older ages.
I always love how thoughtful IM's curriculum is. This series talks a lot about justice, how we are called to work for everyone to have enough, how that isn't an easy calling. It's a very relevant topic and great for older kids to chew on. It worked well as a pre-recorded script for a children's sermon. I would say that, for recorded use, it is a bit long and wordy. I had to cut some things. Some activities are better than others. I've noticed IM leans into verbal discussion rather than movement activities, which isn't great for recordings or for little kids at any time after having listened to a longer lesson. I was trying to serve a very broad age range at once. I worried some weeks there was very little for younger ages. It would be great to get some younger age group materials from this vendor.

Perfect for ZOOM Sunday School
We found that this curriculum was perfect for Zoom Sunday school. Each lesson plan is clearly organized and is easy for our teachers to use. The theological content of each lesson is strong, too, which warms my heart. I highly recommend this pack for your virtual Sunday school needs.

Beatitudes
We adapted the curriculum and are using it with our grades 7-12 youth via zoom this fall. I mailed the family pages and activity pages to the youth in advance. A rotation of teachers is teaching the curriculum. Some teachers created powerpoint presentations while others incorporated movie clips. One of our teachers has been to the Holy Land so she incorporated information and photos about the site where Jesus gave his Sermon on the Mount. We read the Beatitudes as our Gospel lesson on November 2, when we celebrated All Saints Day. It was a nice way to tie everything together. We've had great conversations in the chat bar with each lesson! I appreciate the solid content and the intergenerational approach, making it a curriculum that is easily adapted for all ages.

Beatituded
Our church purchased the Beatitudes curriculum. It was good but i wish I could have sent the coloring pages via email to my kids but I could not attach them because of Adobe.

Fit our needs for this fall!
We've had a rotating team of families lead a short virtual (mostly recorded, occasionally live-streamed) Sunday School time in this Fall in the season of Pandemic. This curriculum has fit our needs well. Families find it straightforward to lead. Some folks use the coloring pages and love them, others ignore them. It's pretty simple, but that's what we were shooting for - no sense in buying a very expensive and extensive curriculum when we don't expect a mixed group of 3-11 year olds to have a tremendously long attention span, or for their parents to really want to sit with them and facilitate crafts on e-Sunday school! As a pastor in a mainline protestant tradition, I am comfortable with the theological content, which is great - other publishers that have put out curriculum designed especially or 'remote' Sunday School come from traditions that might require adaptation for our setting.
My one caveat to families was that they might want to adapt the language of the 'script' a bit, to make it more accessible. It's well-written but some of the language is a bit adult/academic/above the heads of our 5 year olds.

Older Adult Use
Thank you so much for these thoughts, devotions, reflection questions. I used the leader script for weekly video devotions here at work (a Senior Living Community) on our closed circuit tv channel. And then handed out the Discussion Page/Coloring Page into each Neighborhood for use with our Residents each week. For those Residents, temporarily off campus, I sent the video link and weekly page via email. Much appreciated and a good focus for us as we moved through the fall months here in 2020.

Looking forward to the next one!

Lovely Curriculum
I did not use this curriculum as designed. I used it primarily with middle schoolers and in person rather than with a video and worksheets at home. It wasn't "pick up and use" in that context, but it was thoughtful and put together well enough that I could very easily pull a discussion for middle schoolers out of it with ~30 or so minutes of prep work. This curriculum also provided us with some preaching insight as they approached the Beatitudes in a fresh new way. Overall, we've been a fan!

Excellent format and content, very timely and powerful message
I loved the simplicity of this curriculum which actually makes it feasible for families to engage with from home. But I can also imagine it would be wonderful for in-person Sunday School or small groups as well. The content was so powerful and effective at helping our kids understand what God wants our world to be like, how we should treat others, building character in our young ones. It is also very adaptable. I actually can't wait to do it again in the future.