As you've heard me say repeatedly, from September to May, the kids and I all attend Bible Study Fellowship. I can't say enough good things about it, for myself and for the children. Go check out the website, and make plans to attend a welcome class the second week of September in whatever city you reside! (Just note that you can't take your kids the first time you go.)
While it's nice to have a few months off from getting somewhere at 9am with all of the children reasonably well-dressed (other than church), the schedule does leave me without any set Bible study plan for the summer. In various past years, I've used this devotional of Psalms, Proverbs, and the New Testament, usually choosing a book or two at random to read slowly over the summer months.
A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon this Bible reading plan, the Gospel of John, broken up into sections appropriate for elementary-aged children. Levi reads at about a third-grade level at least (we think), and especially loves to read out of the "big Bible" (as opposed to his toddler Bible), so I immediately thought, "hey! We could do this!"
Our routine goes something like this: I get out the Bible, a notebook, and the reading plan. I have Levi find where we are in the Bible while I glance over the questions in the aforementioned devotional, just to give myself an idea of what we can/should be looking for as we read. He reads the passage out loud, and I stop him every few verses (or whenever appropriate) to ask questions about what we just read. As much as possible, I write down what we're learning in the notebook. When we get to the end of the passage, I do a quick overview both of the Scripture and of what we wrote down. Then Levi gets to put a sticker over that day's assignment on the reading plan.
Reading from John 2:13-25 this morning
The whole process takes us maybe 15-20 minutes start to finish. Typically, this is during Silas's morning nap, and Owen plays with trains in the living room. (Now that Silas is chasing Owen around the living room, grabbing his trains, Owen is always glad for uninterrupted time to build and drive to his heart's content.) Usually, when there's time, we follow Bible reading with a math lesson, and so it is that I suddenly feel like I'm almost doing "real school" a few days a week.
This weekend, Levi will move up into the four-year-old Sunday school class at church. With this promotion comes the first Bible given by our church, and I'm so excited for him to be reading out of his very own ESV next week. (Daddy's big study Bible is fun to use, but I'm constantly worrying that Levi will accidentally tear a page or something.)
I always figured I'd be doing some sort of Bible study with my children as they grew up, but I didn't expect it to happen this early or to have it be such a precious time. What a gift.
Totally unrelated: after we finished, Levi climbed up into the papasan for a snuggle with Owen. Those boys of mine do love to get cozy!
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