Spiritual Homeschooling

I’m sending my oldest off to Kindergarten this fall. As I look forward to helping him with school assignments and projects, I realize that one subject won’t be taught in his public school--the Bible. Over the past 5 years, I’ve fallen in love with the Bible. The more I study this incredible book, the more I depend on it to survive.

Brandon and I take primary responsibility for the spiritual development of our children. We read the Bible together, we talk about God, we pray. We are supported in this endeavor by our church and it’s various ministries. With the recent implementation of a family routine, devotional time has been an important addition to our schedule.

The boys love The Beginner’s Bible. Each received this Bible as a gift on their 3rd birthday. Owen and I have read through the Bible multiple times. Miles is showing more and more interest in the stories and pictures presented. I want to nurture this interest and model a growing and vibrant relationship with the Lord.

After getting dressed and eating breakfast each morning, the boys know it will be devotional time. They grab a special chair to sit in or plop down on a pillow. Sometimes we sit at the kitchen table. We begin by patting the Bible and singing a special song they learned at church. Next, we say our verse of the week. We all open our Bibles to the story for the day. We are starting at the beginning and going straight through. Between creativity from the Lord and some google searches, I look for coloring pages, mazes, experiments, crafts, etc. to go along with the Bible story. We finish with a prayer/thankfulness time and a few songs. We all really enjoy this time. Throughout the week, I seek out teachable moments to apply the lessons we are learning to everyday life.

This all takes a bit of creativity and planning ahead, but the investment is so worth it. I am finding the planning to be fun and I am even learning things as I seek to pull out important precepts to teach my children.

Below are two pictures from the days we talked about Noah's Ark. We focused on the story of Noah's Ark the first day and rainbows the second day. The boy's and I really got into our rainbow experiment using milk, food coloring, and soap. The last two pictures were a snack we had the day we talked about Adam and Eve. We used apple slices to make a mouth. This snack idea was in one of Owen's High Five magazines.