In our homeschool, we begin our day with Morning Gathering. And we start that with Bible time. Currently, we do this over breakfast so that everyone is pretty stationary and focused. Our memory work this year is memorizing a Bible verse each week that goes along with the story we are reading. When I can’t find a verse from the particular story, I try to find a verse from Psalms or Proverbs that fits part of the theme for the story. For example, when we read about Noah, we memorized Proverbs 3:5-6. (In these verses it says God always keeps his promises)
After we practice the weekly verse, we review older verses we have learned. We will use the method I learned about from the Simply Charlotte Mason Video “Memorize Scripture in Just Five Minutes Each Day”, but in binder form, once we have collected more verses. Right now we just review all the verses we’ve learned so far on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
Something I have been challenged with in the way we think about passing along “Bible stories” to our kids, is reminding kids who the “hero” of the story is. I learned from Meredith Anne Miller on Instagram about the importance of centering God, and not the people in the story. Every “kids” Bible story we read points to God’s faithfulness. Rather than comparing ourselves to David or Moses, or Peter, we should be focused on God, and what aspects of His character we can learn from the story. This is an approach I’m trying to take as we learn together.
Mondays
We read our new Bible story in either the Children’s Bibles we have, or a very short version I have paraphrased in advance to introduce them to the story. Then, we begin to learn our verse and talk about what it means and why it’s important.
Tuesdays
We add the story to our visual Bible timeline, and review the stories we’ve learned. I printed out the black & white bible character clip art from Educlips to use for this project.
Wednesdays
On Wednesdays, we read from The Gospel Story Bible. I agonized over choosing a devotion type of book to read with the kids and finally settled on this one. I’m SO pleased with it for many reasons. The stories are brief, but deep. Each one ends with how that story points to Jesus. They also have three quick questions to discuss. So far it’s working perfectly for what I had in mind.
Fridays
I ask the kids to retell the stories in their own words. Eventually I would like to add in another activity to go along with what we have learned. However, I tend to burn out quickly when I try to do all.the.things at once, so we’re going slowly here. Another thing I will be adding later in the year is a worship song that we can learn and sing together each morning of the week.
Bible time has been a great addition to our homeschool this year, and I love how it is causing my kids to think and ask questions about God during other times of the day.
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