Teaching Kids the Bible

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.  Deuteronomy 6:4-9 

If I want my children to love and absorb the Bible, I must love it. The words must be in my heart. Then, and only then, can I effectively teach them to our children. Micah frequently gets up as I am finishing my personal reading in the morning. I like that because I want him to see me reading the Bible. Some things are "more caught than taught." Teaching the Bible and Biblical principles shouldn't be pushed into little corners of life and not talked about after that. We are to discuss the Bible when we sit, when we walk, when we lay down, when we get up. That's a lot of instructing.

Obviously I'm not an expert since my children are under the age of three. But I do want to document what I'm doing for future reference. We have specific Bible times worked into our routine. (If I want to do something regularly, I have to work it into a routine.) Some days we don't get all of them, specifically the Bible story during morning reading but the rest are routinely part of our day. I want my children to know that the Bible is supposed to be part of their daily lives regardless of how old or young they are.

Over breakfast, I read from Psalms and one of the Gospels. We started in John. I read as much or as little as we need to that day based on time constraints and our daily schedule. Then we work on our memory verse of the week. I am using this list. I love how it's divided up into categories. I write our verses on index cards (I look them up in my Bible since she uses a different version of the Bible than I do) and stick them in the front of my Bible. After we read our chapters I read the verse aloud a few times. This is mostly for my benefit. I wanted to work memorization into my schedule but I know Micah will also benefit from it. He doesn't talk much yet but he absorbs everything he hears. And before long he will be memorizing them too!

We also sing the "B-I-B-L-E" song after we read. Micah loves that part and I know it won't be long before he's singing it too! My aunt even taught me another verse that I had never heard.

"The B-i-b-l-e, I take it home with me. 

I read and pray, and then obey

The B-i-b-l-e!"

I am teaching Micah not to talk during the Bible reading. I remind him that nothing he has to say is as important as what the Bible says. This is great training not only for him being quiet when he needs to but also looking forward to him moving into the church service. 

How do (did) you teach your children the Bible?