The Bible Periodic Table

A few years ago, I decided my classroom at church needed something to fill the boring grey walls. When my daughter was little we found her a shirt with a periodic table of names of Jesus. I thought it was pretty neat, and she got lots of compliments when she wore it. I wanted instead to do a little twist on that and make it books of the Bible. It's important that kids learn what they are, and familiarize themselves with how to look up Bible verses.

Sword drills are an awesome way to help with this skill! If you've never heard of a sword drill- it's a game you can play with your child(ren). You have everyone hold their Bible above their head (this makes it fair), yell out a Bible reference, have the kids repeat the reference, and then the person who can find it the quickest wins. Kids love some competition!

Another way I helped the kids in my church get familiar with all the books of the Bible, I made a HUGE Periodic table on our 2nd and 3rd grade classroom wall. It was so easy! I uploaded my PDF document I made to our local copy shop. (You can scroll to the bottom of the page to download this.) I printed each section of books on different colored paper. The Gospels had their own color. The Books of History have their own color. Paul's letters have another color, and so forth. This makes it look more like the real Periodic Table of Elements. I always meant to make a key to the books and what color they were, however I never got around to it. The kids still love them! I laminated each page, and I used thumb tacks to hang them up. They look pretty good for being on a classroom wall for the past three years!!

I also chose a helpful verse to put on the bottom of each book, usually the verse that is most popular for that book. This has helped the kids in class many times for certain assignments!

Here's a couple examples....

Of course I had to use my favorite verse, "My cup overflows with blessings..."

Download a PDF of the Bible Periodic Table