How to have a consistent Bible study for kids

Part of teaching Sunday School is having a consistent Bible study. A few weeks ago I talked to you about having a consistent Bible study as an adult (link to that at the bottom of the post, since this is a series). I started to write a second half to that post and realize there is way too much to cover about a consistent Bible study for kids as an addendum to another post, so here goes the second half of that. This is all part of my over-reaching goal of family discipleship.

There are two different ways to look at this:

Having a consistent Bible Study as a homeschooler

Having a consistent Bible study as a private or public schooler

They have very different answers and different approaches.

How to have a consistent Bible study for your kids as a homeschooler

In many ways, as a homeschooler, you have it easier to make a consistent Bible study a priority. You control your child’s schedule, and you set the priorities. However, I think we homeschoolers fall prey to the “too many good things” problem.

My plan: put Bible study on your schedule. Each week morning we have an hour of reading. We split the hour into three parts, required reading, just for fun reading, and Bible study. Each segment lasts 20 minutes. This happens first thing every morning. I am very good at letting time get away from me, and if I don’t put our hour of reading first thing in the morning it doesn’t happen.

I’ll also confess the hour of reading gives me time to engage my brain and be ready to talk to people.

Other methods I’ve seen work for homeschool Bible study

For those who use workboxes, I’ve seen Bible study done as a workbox.

Put Bible study as part of your morning time, this works really well for my Bible study for kids ebook because you can work through each type of Bible study together. We have started including Bible study in our morning time to talk about what we learned each day after they’ve done their independent Bible study.

Assigned Bible study project, similar to putting it in the workbox, assign this as a subject. This works if you are working your kids towards independent study.

How to have a consistent Bible study for your kids in public school

Or private school, for that matter. I know some private schools have Bible time as part of their class, but independent Bible time is super important.

I went to public school, so I’ve got a bit of familiarity with this as a kid. I’ve never been a morning person, and while I had friends who did their Bible study in the morning, I never could.

In all honesty, I think trying to get a Bible study in first thing in the morning when getting ready for school is setting yourself up for failure (unless your family is super-organized and has everything together family, in which case, please TEACH ME!).

The two methods I’ve found work best:

Have Bible study after school as your child eats their snack.

Whenever I got home from school I HAD to eat a snack because I was starving. I would either sit and read a book or watch TV as I ate.  All told I probably spent about 30 minutes on my snack time.  Your kids can easily do their Bible study as they eat their snacks after school.

But Ticia, my kid needs to decompress when they get home from school

I hear you, there are some kids who need that decompression time. That is where option two comes in. Have your child do their Bible study after dinner. They’ve had time to play, gotten their homework done, eaten dinner, and now they can concentrate to do their Bible study.

This is when I did my Bible study as a kid. When I got ready for bed, I would sit and read for an hour or so, and read my Bible.  I’d use the methods my Mom taught me (the big one I remembered from her was the 5 Ws, a chapter in the book). Then in high school, I started using some methods I learned from my youth pastor (another chapter in the book).

As I grew older my Bible study kept going later and later. I’ve got a Bible study I did in high school where I fell asleep in the middle of writing my notes. I actually kind of liked that because it meant to me that my last thoughts were of God.

How do you schedule Bible study for your kids?

This is all part of a series answering your Bible study questions:

• How to have a consistent Bible Study as an adult
• You can know how to study the Bible!
• What if I don’t know the answer?