Last week we had the privilege of having Pastor Mike, our senior Pastor, come do a question answer session with our mom’s group. It was a great time and brought up a great question of how do we teach our children about the Bible.
Now I’m no expert and I’ve never been good at rote memorization, but there are some fun ways to sneak in a bit of learning while you go about your day to day life that we do that you may enjoy too.
One of the easiest ways is through song. There are all kinds of cds, videos, and dvds that you can pick up that will teach scripture through music. We got Katrina a CD player for her room after she turned 4 so she could listen to Adventures in Odyssey tapes after we tucked her in for the night, that way we could put both girls to bed at the same time, but she got the privilege of staying up a bit later. But for the last two months she has been listening to a Cedarwood Kids cd every day, morning, noon, and night, over and over and over. And now she has memorized them and will spontaneously break out in “Oh God you are my God!” or other songs on the cd.
In the car we have these books called “My Travel Time Bible Stories”, there is a whole series of them. The book is the size of a CD case so you can store it in with your other CDs. There are 20 short stories in each book. They come with a CD that will read each story, followed by a song that goes with each story. One day Katrina was listening to it and all of a sudden goes, “the Bible tells us to obey our parents, just like you always say mom!” So those we listen to in the car and they love to follow along in the books.
Since my girls love music so much I have also picked up Steve Green’s Hide’em in your Heart VHS tapes. These are songs made straight from scriptures so they can learn to hide God’s Word in their hearts. They love to sing and dance along, and it gives me a few free minutes of peace, literally.
And Steve Elkins writes all kinds of books such as 52 Bible verses that kids should learn, which is bright and colorful, and comes with a CD that has bible verses set to music.
All of these are suggestions of course, and I always buy them used and search them out at garage sales and thrift stores. But since to me this is the most important thing I can teach my children I will pay more for them than other things like Dora, or Princesses ;P
A few other ones I like is the Princess Bible by Sheila Walsh. It’s all stories about Princesses from the Bible such as Esther. There are stories to act out and everyday stories applying these Bible stories to kids everyday life. She has also made a Warriors Bible for boys, with stories such as King David. This we read before bed each night and the girls love acting the stories out. I figured since the girls are so into Princesses I’d better take advantage while I have the chance. Katrina loved it right off because it has a tiara on the cover which actually has “jewels” embedded in the cover.