Mother Culture: Teaching Bible

It seems bad grammar to title this “Teaching Bible” but really we do need to talk about much more than “teaching the Bible” or “teaching from the Bible” or “teaching about the Bible”.  That’s why I am generalizing: so that we can look at this most important and foundational subject from many aspects.

One of the key things that we grappled with in talking about teaching the Bible as a subject in school was dealing with the fact that we don’t want it to be pigeon holed as just a subject in school.  We need our kids to know that reading and learning from the Bible is not simply an intellectual pursuit but that it is a pursuit of the heart as well. 

So where to start?  Yes, learning from the Bible should be a regular subject in our school schedules and we need to make efforts to expand it beyond the academic.  Let’s first look at the academic though. 

While there are a lot of good children’s Bible story books out there, there is no substitute for just reading the Bible with your children.  If you are reading along with us in Educating the Whole Hearted Child, you know that the Clarkson’s suggest that you chose a specific version that your family will learn and study from just for continuity but didn’t suggest one in particular.  Then just taking time to read and discuss passages from the Bible should be the foundation for Bible learning. 

Their suggestions remind me of a time that I was sitting in a home schooling seminar about how to teach the Bible to our children in school.  The speaker first asked how everyone was currently teaching the Bible.  One woman responded that in their family they simply read the Bible together and that now, her teenaged son read on his own out of devotion and without the need for prompting because of the habits established.  The speaker went on to tell about how we can liven up the scripture lessons by using puppets or dressing up as Mary Magdelene but the real light bulb that went on for me that day was in what I learned from the mom in the front row.

So I took the idea home.  We read the story of David and Goliath.  When in the past I would have taken out a children’s story bible that told how God was looking out for the little guy, instead I read directly from the Bible and asked the kids what they had learned.  My then six year old daughter answered, “David killed Goliath.  Killing is bad but God loved David anyway.”  What a true and wonderful lesson that we wouldn’t have learned if the story had been moralized through the teaching of a children’s story.  Given the opportunity to think about the passage, our children are able to grasp big ideas without us having to chew them up and predigest them first.

While I usually ask the children to narrate the Bible reading both right after we read and the next time that we open up the Bible as a review, some moms said that they liked to do the Bible reading and not ask for a narration until they’ve had a chance to sleep on it and to mull over the ideas they learned.  

There is nothing like simply reading the Bible in order to learn about the Bible.

More on other resources for learning from and about the Bible in my next post tomorrow.

Blessings,

Cori