A couple of years ago my son came out of church clutching his freshly colored version of Noah’s Ark. It was a quintessential “Bathtub Ark” as Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis likes to call it. Round, small, tall, with giraffes sticking their necks out the portholes, it was nothing like the real vessel that God used to preserve life through the Flood that actually happened.
Now, we go to a great church. I know we all take our history as preserved in the Bible very seriously. Why then did the little ones come out of class with such misrepresentations of our past? Surely there were some decent coloring pages they could have used instead.
Ha! Have you had a look on a search engine for a good quality coloring page for your Sunday School class lately? I was amazed and horrified at how pitiful the search results were.
I am pleased to share the best Noah’s Ark printables available!
Hillary Greenwald ran into my plea for help offering quality coloring pages for us and here’s the amazing artwork she submitted. She shows her artwork on her facebook page and has a gallery where you can find out more of what she offers for more advanced coloring and support her artistry; I especially enjoy her Bible study coloring pages. Everything she does is stunning!
Here are the rest of the printable pages I’ve found
Richard Gunther is an amazing Christian cartoonist for kids and apologetics. He’s done a fun depiction of the animals, including dinosaurs, leaving the Ark:
And a lovely one of the dove returning to the ark with a great sense of scale:
Hillary Greenwald has done another version of the ark combined with a Scripture verse. When it’s time to introduce salvation to the kids, this is a great visual aid:
Click for full sized image to print, photo credit: Hillary Greenwald
This is my favorite one from Answers in Genesis, it’s just hard to grasp the scale because there aren’t any animals:
There are also two decent free pages wandering the web that are worth sharing here:
As I write this, “dailycoloringpages.com” won’t load, so I’m not linking to them, but this is a great picture for older kids. The little ones would get frustrated trying to stay in all those lines.
And a nice one of Noah praying after leaving the ark. I can’t find where this originally came from. Please let me know if you can:
And that is really the lot. Even Answers in Genesis hardly has anything to color and there’s very little for the preschool set. So….
Calling all Christian Artists!
Are you an artist? Do you know of one in your family or community? What we need are coloring pages we could print out for 3-6 year olds to use at home and church. I would love to post your artwork here with full attribution and any links you want.
We need simple:
- Large white spaces
- Bold black lines (just not too thick to waste toner)
- Few, distant animals- or perhaps just black silhouettes so the kids don’t get frustrated
- A sense of scale
How can we complain that everyone is teaching our kids to think of Noah’s Ark as a fairy tale when we can’t even offer them something more realistic? God gave you your gift of artistic talent for a reason. Perhaps helping these little ones is a part of the answer!
Noah’s Ark Crafts
I had someone ask if I knew of any crafts to teach about Noah and it sent me on a hunt for more 3D projects for bigger kids.
There is rather nice looking origami version you just have to be good at making lots of well positioned folds to pull off.
A printable cardstock version would require you to draw tiny animals to keep it from looking like a bathtub ark, but you could do it fairly simply.
BTW If you have someone handy with wood, they could use the ratio God gave Noah to build a model. 30:5:3 (that is, 10x longer than it is high and 40% wider than it is tall).
Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven. For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost. How think ye? if a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray? And if so be that he find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth more of that sheep, than of the ninety and nine which went not astray. Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish. Matthew 18:10-14
