Balaam and his donkey

Do you ever wish you could have seen some of the events that happened in the Bible? What did that look like in real life? How amazing was it?
And seriously, what does an angel actually look like? Because we seem to be very confused down here. Ha!
One story I would've loved to be witness to was Balaam. Can you imagine what a donkey would sound like when he talked?

Now, take all that imagination and throw it into your lesson. That makes it all the more fun for the kids.
For illustrations, I love the Abeka books. They have gorgeous pictures of lots of Bible stories. Unfortunately, I didn't have a copy of this one so I chose to use the Brick Testament. If you don't now what that is, check out www.brickbible.com. It's so much fun. Tons of Bible stories told in Legos.

My second and third graders got a kick out of seeing the Bible story come to life in one of their favorite toys.
Then, of course, we had to have an activity to reinforce the story. I chose to do this:
​See that first picture above? It's a coloring picture I snagged from here. Feel free to choose a different coloring picture if you like another better. I cut out the part that was just Balaam and his donkey and glued it to a blank sheet of paper to make copies. Then, we cut out an angel figure (a man figure with a sword, of course) and traced around that figure with a white crayon. Because the white on white doesn't really show up unless you're looking for it, it looks like a big black spot on that side of the page.
I gave the pages to my students and told them to color over that side of the paper with the fat side of a marker. The white crayon stays mostly white, while the rest of the paper turns the color of the marker, illuminating the angel. It appears to Balaam just like it did in the story.
Is this completely fool-proof? No. My boys quickly figured out what was going on and tried to just outline the angel. But oh well. It's still neat. And might work even better with younger kids who aren't so skeptical.

Because we still had about ten minutes, we made a quick puppet. I used the kit from this etsy site because I couldn't resist it. But by all means, use your own ideas. Every class is different. The important part is making sure the kids know the story and know how God was working in those lives as well as ours.
Have you ever taught Balaam? I'm always looking for more fun and interactive ways to teach so feel free to share!