"For more than a thousand years, the Bible, collectively taken, has gone hand in hand with civlization, science, law-- in short, with the moral and intellectual cultivation of the species, always supporting and often leading the way." Samuel Taylor Coleridge
One of Charlotte Mason's ideas about reading your kids the Bible is to not ask too many questions. She suggests that you just read it to them and let them absorb it. This is very freeing because you don't have to worry as much whether they are "getting it." And you don't empose some artificial "lesson" out of each passage. At this point we just read a Bible story every morning and pray. I think the habit of it is important..starting the day that way. Then the kids know that you, the parent, thinks this is a priority. If I skip any lessons or have to take a short cut, I try not to skip our Bible time.
This year we used Egermeier's Bible Story Book. My dad read this to me as a kid. It is very thorough and just right for elementary age.
Even though Egermeier's was our primary source, we took lots of breaks to do some other really good series that I want to use every year to reinforce certain ideas. One of these is "Big Thoughts for Little Thinkers." I highly recommend it. Each has a different idea like The Trinity, The Gospel, Missions etc. It has little kids explaining to eachother what these ideas are.
At holidays we may stop and do a series of books about Easter or Christmas. I really like the Brian Wildsmith illustrations. He has Joseph, Easter, Exodus, Jesus and Mary. Maybe more.
And there is really fantastic, kid-friendly docterine in the Paul Maier books. He has The Very First Christmas, The Very First Easter, The Very First Christians (Pentacost), The Real Story of the Exodus, Creation, Flood and maybe some other I don't know about.
Sammy and the Shepherd is a study of the 23rd Psalm.
We also read through The Jesus Storybook Bible once a year. We have probably read it 3-4 times since PK1 was little. It goes a lot faster than Egermeirs and is very different. It gives such a great overview of God's plan for his people. I have started giving this book as birthday and baby gifts. I recommend it to anyone who will listen.
2 comments:
We are reading through Jesus Storybook Bible now and Jamison LOVES it. I love all of these recommendations and will definitely look into them further. I appreciate you sharing this information, especially about not having to give a huge explanation because that's where I can get tied up. Thanks!
I'll have to check out those topical books...Claire would love them. And I love anything that helps answer her hard questions. Is their one called "Why God created Satan"? Because that's what Claire wants to know....
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