A Review of Teaching the Bible

One of the most important things we can do is teach our children the Bible from a young age. My friend, Alyssa, has written a wonderful curriculum guideline that makes teaching the Bible to my little ones so easy and fun!

Teaching the Bible is written for toddlers through early elementary aged children. There are twelve units covering the Old Testament and New Testament, from the Creation through Jesus's second coming. Each unit contains lessons that inlcude the Bible story, scripture references, full-color memory verse posters, and lots of fun hands-on activities to reinforce the Bible lessons. 

memory verse poster for the Creation lessons

It's so much easier to explain how a curriculum works by showing you some example lessons. I started this with Unit One with Zeke (age 5) and Zoey (19 months).  Unit One is broken down into five lessons, with different sub-lessons under that. It took us a month or so to get through Unit One, but we went slower than suggested. You can definitely speed it up or slow it down to suit your needs.

We took two weeks to complete the Creation lessons because there were so many activities that we didn't want to skip any of them! Here a just a few of the activities we completed:

A sensory bin containing pictures that depicted "daytime" and "nighttime." Zeke used a flashlight to find the pictures and then sorted them by whether it was an activity we do during the day or night.

We made suncatchers with contact paper and tissue squares.

We made rain using shaving cream and colored water. They loved this! Then they played with water.

Zeke used bubble wrap to paint some fish. He then cut and glued them to a piece of blue paper. 

The sample lesson I'm going to show you is Unit One, Lesson Five called "Jacob and Esau." We read the story from several children's Bibles that I have. Our memory verse was Proverbs 3:5, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding." 

To introduce the story, I put a stuffed animal in one paper bag and a smooth, wooden block in another. I had Zeke close his eyes and feel the items in the bag, describing them to me. We talked about how Esau was hairy, like the stuffed animal, and Jacob was smooth, like the block.

We read the story using one of our children's Bibles. I love the fact that you can use any Bible you have, even using the actual scriptures instead of a children's Bible if you prefer. We've used several different children's Bibles, reading the story in a different one for a few days.

Zeke and I completed an All About Me worksheet with his favorite things. I helped him write a little, but he did a good job on most of it! It's always fun to see the answers kids come up with. 

The next day we talk about how Jacob disguised himself as Esau. I gave Zeke some art supplies and asked him to make a mask of anything he wanted! He chose a goat. He did such a great job with this paper plate goat mask, even making a goat headband to wear!

The other activity was to make soup together, but we haven't had a chance to do this yet. But you can see how simple yet impactful the activities in this curriculum are!

Some of my favorite things about Teaching the Bible are:

• The memory verses include hand motions that make memorizing easier, and the memory verse posters are full-color and beautiful!
• There are so many fun ideas listed each week. You can pick and choose the ones that fit your family's need the best.
• The activities are simple using items that are found around your house. 
• The stories go in chronological order and include Old and New Testament stories.
• I can tailor the activities to my toddler and my kindergartner, and they both get so much out of this curriculum.
• It's truly an open-and-go curriculum with little prep.

I am going to continue using this curriculum because Zeke and Zoey both really love when it's "Bible Time!" They are learning so much, and Zeke has retained so much information. I also love that he is memorizing scripture. The pages are very print-friendly, and the instructions for the activities are super easy to understand. I like that Alyssa included a "Bottom Line" for each activity! That ensures that you're driving home the main idea of the lesson in a way your children can understand and remember.

Teaching the Bible is available here! If you order the entire year-long curriculum bundle, available in June, you can use this code to get 25% off! The units are available individually right now!

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