The One That Nagged At Me The Most

No, not one of my children....the curriculum choice that was the hardest for me. Bible.

When we first started homeschooling I thought, "Well...we'll just use THE BIBLE!" Who needs curriculum?

But the logistics of teaching two children who are 4 years apart in age are different in real life. Many homeschoolers have a much wider age range than that to deal with, I know. Little Bit was 3 when we started homeschooling and I was lucky if I could get her to sit through a reading from a children's Bible. Meanwhile, Sweetheart knew a lot of the "basic" stories and needed to work on memorization and stuff.

To me, there is "family Bible stuff" and there is "Bible as a subject in school." Now don't get me wrong, our family does not sit around having devotions every night. Maybe we should...but we don't. What I am talking about here though is Bible as a subject in school.

I want them to memorize things: the fruit of the Spirit, the names of the 12 apostles, the Lord's Prayer, the books of the Bible, etc. I want them to learn scriptures and be confident in finding them in the Bible. I want them to hear Bible stories and read Bible stories and enjoy them. I want them to get an idea of the order of things. Oh, there is SO MUCH I want them to learn! And after I learned about all the catechisms out there...I realized there is more than just facts to learn, but doctrine too!

Bible is the most important subject in my opinion. Oh, don't get me wrong--the other stuff is important too...but if you teach your child to read and yet they don't read God's Word....

OK, so. I've tried a million things. All of it was found on the internet or made up by yours truly. And some of it was good. But I wasn't satisfied! And there was no rhyme or reason to any of it.

Then, in a moment of frustration I asked you guys what to use and I also posted that question on The Homeschool Lounge. And that is how we discovered this:

It's called Bible Study Guide for All Ages. This is a picture of Little Bit's book. It's for 3 years old through Kindergarten. Sweetheart uses the Intermediate book for 1st through 3rd graders. Get this: EACH DAY THEY ARE ON THE SAME STORY!!!! It's heavenly. I sit in between them and read the verses from the Bible and then pause while they complete that section on their page. See how cute the cartoon drawings are?

The directions will tell them to circle something or color something or fill in a blank or whatever. We go through the story a few verses at a time so there is no long extended listening. And it's all there for them in cartoon form.

On the other side of the sheet there is memory work, map work or timeline work for the older kiddos, and a make believe application story for the little ones. This is Sweetheart's page and although it looks like a lot of words, some of it is just "Say the first 5 books of the New Testament." It goes really fast.

It takes us two days to get through one of these sheets and we have been doing 2 sheets a week. On Fridays we use our DVD Bible which is cute, but annoys me because it leaves out big parts of stories. Oh well. The songs are great and they like to dance around the room.

Now, having said all that....Little Bit is getting tired of the work involved in this curriculum. I think for her right now, being a very young 5, one lesson sheet would be enough each week with other stuff done the other days of the week. So, we may not always be on the same story (which makes me twitch) but I also don't want her to hate Bible because I pushed her so it would be more convenient for Mommy. You know?

Now, if you have a child who prefers writing, fill-in-the-blank, word finds, etc. they might not like this too much. I have a 9 year old who is all about the art and the coloring. In fact, in the evenings she had been known to gather up all her old lessons and finish coloring them. And I'm still trying to figure out how to store these old lessons (the paper is long) so they can look back at them whenever they want to.

Little Bit, on the other hand, is not so big on the coloring. But surprisingly, she has colored these sheets. That's the front of her sheet up there. You can certainly do the story on the front without coloring it, but it's something to think about if you have an anti-colorer. (yes it is a word)

I only bought the student sheets and they are very affordable. I haven't felt the need for all the other stuff you could buy but OK--the CD would nice and I would really like to add these Bible Book Summary Cards.

So there you have it. That's our Bible curriculum and it's working great for now.