This is a subject I don't talk about too much, and there is a good reason for that. I am an ordained pastor, and my husband is Agnostic. He and I do not agree on the whole religion thing, and I typically don't push it. However, this year I am going to be doing bible lessons and daily prayer. Here's what I'm *thinking* I will do for this.
I have a lot of wonderful books thanks to using Sonlight for a few years. I have been exposed to books that I would have never picked up typically for our children, and in a very good way. I have a growing collection of books of missionary stories, Christian heroes in history, and devotions type books. My plan this year is to pull from that collection of books and have fun with it.
One book I have is called "Window on the World." I got this book to go with core B+C a couple years ago (when I expanded our core B to B+C) but we never really got into it. I'm going to make some notes this upcoming week and read through it so that I know what I'm going to be doing with it really, since I don't know much about it. What I do know, at this point, is that this book talks about how people in other countries live and and believe, with some details for how we can pray for these people. It is probably more of a geography book than anything, but will still be fun to add as we learn about and pray for other cultures. I plan to put up a world map so that we can mark each country as we pray for it. I will be lining this book up to go with the other bible materials I'm going to be using.
The main part of my bible studies for right now is a book called "Hero Tales." This book focuses on Christian heroes in history and came with our core A (the core has since been redesigned and this book was removed from the program, sadly). This is one of a 3 or 4 book series, but I'm just going to do this one book for now. There are 15 Christian heroes in this book, including Gladys Aylward, Martin Luther, and Harriet Tubman to name just a few. There are two stories for each hero, and a couple pages of basic information to go with it. I will focus on a hero each week, reading one of the 3 sections to the kids out loud. There is also a list of character traits in the back, which I will use with the studies for discussion points as they come up.
The first 15 weeks of bible study will look like this (as an example)
Gladys Aylward 3 sections- 3 days
China reading from Window- 1 day
Missionary story- 1 day
I have a couple books with missionary stories as well that I'll incorporate on a 5 day week (the weeks with 4 days or fewer I'll skip the missionary story for the week). This particular part will be aimed at Missa, with Jordan permitted to not listen because some of the stories being a bit intense. A couple stories involve a bear attack, being shot, and other violent acts that she may not be able to process quite yet. I also have some fun picture books with stories that I can read to her when the missionary story of the week may be too rough. Those books are light and fun but still teach the wonderful way God loves us.
Once we finish the Hero Tales book I have here, I'll decide if I want to purchase another one in the series or if we'll move on to focus mainly on character traits or something like that. I have 15 weeks of this study plan, with a week to prepare beforehand, and that should get me covered with bible until right around Christmas, when I'll pick up and do a study on the birth of Jesus. After that I will likely spend some time doing a study on the life of Jesus, or I may do something completely different. I find that it really is best to not plan too far in advance with things like this. If I set a whole series of "ok study this and then this and that and the other" to cover a year or longer, I tend to get discouraged and burn out. However, a 15 week study plan goal like this one should be fairly easy to keep up with and finish. I'm looking forward to seeing how we do with it.
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