Homeschool Bible Lessons

I have tried several different approaches to teaching the Bible to my children. My oldest began reading pretty early so from about ages 5 - 7 or 8 he really enjoyed the free bible lessons from Calvary Chapel. But once he outgrew those I really struggled with finding a good free Bible curriculum. But my husband started having D write Bible verses as copywork to help improve his handwriting. And it is still amazing to me how much scripture has gotten inside of him from such a simple task.

Since I have 3 little ones so close in age I have tried teaching a Bible lesson a little at a time over the course of a week. But now I am thinking of taking a "Sunday school class" approach with the children. I will teach the lesson in one day. I will try to keep it short (to keep everyone's attention), but memorable.

Here is the new method that I'm going to try on Wednesday.

• listen to the passages on our dramatized Bible CD
• have children read, discuss, and color a Bible mini book
• do a craft
• have the children recap the lesson out loud

Why I'm Switching to this Approach
I recently started helping out in the children's church and I was amazed at how much my children retain from a single class. So, I realized that it really doesn't take a week long of "studying" scripture when they're so small. What a relief. It was challenging to try to stretch a Bible lesson for 5 straight days. But I'm finally learning that quality really does matter more than quantity.

Bible Mini Books
I am so glad that I cam across Bible mini books during my search for free Bible curriculum. These things are pure genius. And I am so grateful to those who have made these little treasures and offered them for free online. Here are the resources that I use for free Bible Mini books.

• Dltk-Bible
• Christian Preschool Printables
• Preschool Sunday School Central

By utilizing all three sources, you can cover quite a bit of the Bible. We're covering the stories in the order they occur in the Word . And my 12 year old is studying the same lesson using the free Padfield Bible curriculum. He did a few lessons from it last year and really enjoyed it.

Update 03/30/11 Smiley (age 6) is starting to say that the DLTK work is "babyish". And he is not really into coloring. So I am keeping the Bible study the same for everyone else. But I am starting to print out lessons from Calvery Chapel for him. Everyone is still studying the same lesson, but with (hopefully) age appropriate material.

Tower of Babel Study

Scripture - Genesis 11:1-9
Reading and coloring book - Tower of Babel mini-book (middle of the page)
Bible Study for 11 year old - The Beginning: Y1Q1 (pages 19-20 of the pdf file)

Bible Activity Books - Make Your Own for Free

My four and five year old really enjoy the jumbo coloring and activity books that are sold in dollar stores. There's a little of something for each child - dot to dot, word searches, secret messages, coloring, and more. So I went on a search for some bible activity books like the jumbo ones that we can use for homeschool. I have not found anything to my liking so I started putting together my own.

In each Bible activity book I try to include (if I can find one) a:

• coloring page
• maze
• word search
• crossword puzzle
• dot to dot
• secret message
• journaling page
• blank page - for children to draw their own picture of the lesson
• word search
• bible verse copywork
• cut and paste craft

Here are instructions on how to put together the bible activity books.

• Use the coloring page as the "cover" for the Bible activity books.
• Print on the front and back of each page. This makes it look like a real book and it saves on paper. Don't worry too much about the order of the the other pages except for the pages for the cut and paste craft.
• For the cut and paste, cut a piece of construction paper the same size as the other sheets. Place that page second to last. And make the page that the children will be cutting out the last one. This way you can carefully detach the last page from the book for easy cutting. (The children paste their work onto the construction paper.)
• Then staple all of the pages together. Four staples pretty close to the edge should be sufficient. This way the pages open up almost flat.
• You may also want to hole punch the books so that they can be stored in a large 3 ring binder once the children move on to a new lesson.

Where to find pages for your Bible activity books.

I get almost all of my pages for free from the internet. At first it was time consuming but I have gotten more effective with my searches on Google. When searching for coloring pages, I type in what I am looking for, press enter, and then click on images. I usually find a well done coloring page on the first page of Google.

Also here are some sites that I frequently get pages from:

• DLTK - Teach
• A Kids Heart
• Garden of Praise
• MSSS Crafts - Old Testament
• MSSS Crafts - New Testament

It does take a bit of time to put together our own Bible activity books. But I can make puts that appeal to my children and help make learning more fun.