Teaching Bible in Morning Time

Hi, this is Sheri from the blog OurLifeHomeschooling.com, where I post homeschooling encouragement for everyday moms. In this video, I'm going to be talking about teaching Bible in morning time. One of the many reasons we homeschool is because it gives us the opportunity to share our faith with our kids. I'm inspired by verses like the ones from Psalm 78, where the children of Israel are saying that we will not hide these truths from our children, but we will tell the next generation the glorious deeds of the Lord about his power and his mighty wonders. Even the children not yet born, and they in turn will teach their own children, so the next generation might know him. And also Deuteronomy 6, where the Lord commands the children of Israel to teach the next generation to talk about the Lord when they're walking by the way, when they're lying down, when they're rising up. They were supposed to bind his words like a sign on their gates and on their houses. He even said to put them as frontlets between their eyes. The Bible is a book that has changed my life. It is full of history. It's still the number one bestseller around the world, and ultimately it contains the message of the gospel, which is God reconciling man to himself through his son Jesus. So it's a book that I am excited to share with our kids, and it's one we just do in small, short lessons daily as part of our morning time. I consider it a responsibility and also a great privilege to introduce our children to their creator through his word. Just as it's important to me to feed our children physically, and you know I like to make sure that they are healthy, just as I care about their physical health, I think it's really important also to be concerned about their spiritual condition. And you know we can't save our to their creator, but I do feel the responsibility to faithfully read his word to them, and that's why we've made Bible a part of our morning time. In a recent post, I wrote about how we do morning time in our house. We have some things that we do daily and some subjects that we do regularly, and those regular subjects, I tend to loop them. So I have them in a list and I just go to the next one. But Bible is one of the subjects that we do daily. This would be on our daily list, and I will link the whole post that I did on morning time below if you'd like some more information about that. One thing that's always been really important to me is in teaching Bible is to consider what is my purpose in teaching this subject to my kids. For me, the purpose is for them to be able to read the Bible for themselves. And so that's kind of always my ultimate goal with them, for them to be able to read and interpret it for themselves and form their own response. And so in doing that, I enjoy reading just the Bible to them. There are so many great curriculums out there that teach Bible. There's just so much available that sometimes it can feel kind of archaic or just too simple to read just the Bible by itself. But since that is my ultimate goal for them, then that's where I kind of place my emphasis in reading the literal text to them. So it can seem very simple and very basic to just open the book and read, but that's what we do. So I value reading the text, just simply reading the text. Now I realize that this can be quite a jump when you're talking about, you know, your kids start out as toddlers and then preschoolers, kindergartners, to just read out of the Bible. So I take a scaffolding approach with our kids, which means I try to give them a foundation of understanding of the Bible, of how the Bible is laid out, and build on that. And with the ultimate goal, again, of having them be able to read the Bible for themselves. I have a couple of storybook Bibles that I read to them, two or three that we've used. For me, when they have heard several Bible stories, then, you know, after over time, each time they hear it, it becomes more familiar and they become more aware of the characters and the layout and the flow of the Old Testament, the New Testament, and they are more and more ready when you, for when you read the actual text, the literal text of the Bible. So I'm just going to show you a couple of the storybook Bibles that I have used. This one, you can see, is falling apart and has lots of coloring on it. This, I think we've gone through maybe two or three times. Now that's over a long period of time. We've been homeschooling over 10 years. This is the Child Storybook Bible by Catherine Voss. It's just, it has so much great history. It's well written. We've especially liked the Old Testament section of the Kings. We've learned so much about when the northern kingdom of Israel fell in 586 to the Assyrians and then the southern kingdom of Judah fell in 722 to the Babylonians. It just provides a basic groundwork and layout of the Old Testament and then the New Testament as well. And hearing these Bible stories helps them to become more familiar with the Bible so that when we read the text to them, it's not such a big leap for them. Another one is the Jesus Storybook Bible. This is kind of for younger ages. And what I love about this Bible is that the gospel message of man's need for a Savior and of Jesus as the Savior of the world is throughout this Storybook Bible. In every story, they are showing how the stories of the Bible point to the coming of the Savior. This is just a great book, especially for younger children. And we've really enjoyed the Jesus Storybook Bible. A last one that is kind of newer to me that we've just started reading. It's a smaller one. It does not have as many Bible stories in it is the Wonder Book of Bible Stories. This is by Logan Marshall. And this is similar to the Child's Story Bible. It is well written and has a lot of the main stories of the Bible. So when kids have a basic understanding of the Bible, I think you can easily move on to reading the actual text of the Bible. And just like anything else, you know, when you're starting to learn something new, it can be overwhelming and seem really hard the first time. But the more you do it, the more familiar you are with it. And the more you read about it, the more you know your basic understanding, the more prior knowledge you have. And it becomes easier and easier to understand. You know, if I would pick up my husband's Popular Mechanics magazine, it would be completely foreign and it would be boring for me to read. But if I immerse myself in that world regularly, it would become more and more interesting to me. And those pathways would be formed between my neurons and it would be, you know, something that I would become more and more acclimated to. And I think that's true with the Bible. The more you read the Bible, the easier it is to read the Bible. One thing I've tried not to do when we do Bible in morning time is to keep from sermonizing. I think we kind of can have this tendency that we're supposed to have this experience or have this moment. And that's okay if that happens. But the purpose, again, is for us to be in God's Word every day and for them eventually to be reading the Bible for themselves. And so because of that, it's okay to just read. Just read it. Keep it simple. Don't feel like you need to give them any lesson. God's Word is powerful enough on its own. Another thing is to keep your lessons short. So these stories that I read to them really take anywhere from five to ten minutes. Short lessons are really what feed our children spiritually. Just reading short sections of the Bible regularly over a period of time, I have seen the fruit of this in my own life from reading the Bible regularly. And it's something that I desire to give to my children to feed them just little bits of God's Word every day. So some simple ideas for Bible in morning time that I've used, other than reading just straight reading, would be getting out a map. We have a book of Bible maps that I found at just some kind of secondhand store. And, you know, when we're looking at different places or reading about different things, it really is helpful for them to look on a map and see where we are and to see, oh, this is an actual place, you know, we could go there and visit. So that is really helpful. Another thing I've done is to have the kids read the Bible story. Sometimes when they are reading, it's more meaningful to them and they really pay attention when they're reading. Or sometimes we'll pass it around and have, you know, different children read. And again, when that child is reading, then they are really paying attention and they have, you know, the auditory as well as the visual of being able to see the words. And I think really it helps them to internalize it. I would just encourage you, if you want to do Bible in morning time, to just keep it simple. It's okay to read just the text, to read the text and keep it short, five to 10 minutes. You can start with storybook Bibles, maybe some of the ones that I mentioned, and move on to reading from the Bible itself. I hope this helps you in teaching Bible in morning time and have a great day with your kids.