Nurturing spirituality in your Kids (Pt 6)

In my last post, I promised I would share some resources we have found useful in reading the Bible with our kids, and encouraging them to read it on their own.  Here's the basic list (I have some more general resources I'll share at the end of the series as well).  Feel free to add things you've found useful in the comments!

Kids' Bibles

First, children's Bibles can be a valuable resource in introducing little ones to Bible stories and the basic big story of the Bible too in a way that is understandable to them. There are a few good ones out there and a lot of not so good ones as well. Dave and I have always tested kids' Bibles by choosing a few key stories and looking at how they deal with them.  I like Jean's questions: Do they skip over God's judgement during the flood and the passover? Do they tell the story of Jonah to the end? Do they include Revelation?

We've found The Beginner's Bible a good one for our kids from the ages of about 2-3, and the Candle Bible Stories for Every Day for when they were about 4 and almost ready to graduate onto a real Bible. Neither of those two is perfect – especially the second one – and when they editorialise and paraphrase they don’t always do a very good job. But on the positive side we like the fact that they don’t tend to editorialise and paraphrase as much as some other ones, and we can change the wording when we need to!

We've also used The Jesus Storybook Bible and The Big Picture Story Bible. Both of these are great at telling the big overarching story of the Bible, but we found they didn't tell as many of the stories as some of the other kids’ Bibles, and there is a lot of embellishment and interpretation along the way – either creative imagination or ‘biblical-theologising’. We’ve tended to chop to and fro between those two and the more detailed, less embellished version in The Beginners Bible and the Candle Bible Stories one.

(For a more comprehensive list, Jean has written a good review of kids Bibles out there on her blog)

Bibles

Then there's the Bible itself – the real thing. People have different opinions about when to start reading the Bible to their kids as the main form of Bible reading. Some like to always use that from birth (and avoid kids' Bibles altogether), some put it off until they can read themselves. We've kind of held a middle ground. By the time they are 5 or so and reading, we've aimed to have them mainly reading an easy translation that includes the whole Bible. Up until then, we'll do a bit of a mixture, so at the moment Elsie, my three year old joins in with our family Bible reading in the morning, but I read a kids' Bible to her at night, which I think helps her to connect the dots a bit better.

As for good first Bibles for kids, I recommend the CEV or the NIrV. We've bought NIrVs for our older two and they are just a little easier to understand. The sentences are shorter, the words a little easier and yet the meaning isn't lost.

Bible reading aids

As our kids have started to move beyond the kids' Bibles stage, we've found it helpful to have some material to help us read the Bible with the kids and to encourage them to read it on their own as well.

As a family, we're big fans of Table Talk – which is designed to be done around the table at morning or at night as a family. We do it in the morning and it's worked really well. It's organised so you read through one book of the Bible at a time; each day you read another bit and it has some questions and suggestions for things you can say to your kids about the passage and even some ideas for activities you could do together, like putting a teddy-bear apostle into a basket and lowering him out the window over the walls of Damascus, and so on. Most of the time we do a pretty no-frills version, without the most extravagant and creative activities, but we still find this format works pretty well in including all the kids (Dave tries to ask them questions at their own different levels) and they really love it.

Another book that we haven't used yet, but have on the shelves is Big Truths for Young Hearts which is really a book of systematic theology you can work through with your kids. I'm waiting until our kids get a little older for this one. There are also catechisms you can work through with kids, of course. We haven’t really done that ourselves, apart from the bits and pieces that you get on some Colin Buchanan CDs!

Or you could just read systematically through a book of the Bible as a family or with your kids individually. Dave did this for a few years with Jacob, last thing at night.

Another resource we use which is designed for individual Bible reading is XTB – short for 'Explore the Bible'. It’s set up so that it complements Table Talk and the child can read the same passage that you've done as a family that morning. Jacob started doing this on his own when he was five and had just started learning to read.  Rebecca and I started doing it together earlier this year because she wasn't quite up to reading it on her own at that stage and it worked really well for that 'one to one' purpose as well. Now she reads it on her own at night and I pray with her at the end. They both love it – the way the notes are written is very attractive for kids – with codes they've got to crack and other interesting things like that. I like the way that the notes try and apply to passage to the kids' lives with good probing questions – and suggestions for how it would apply to a child their age.  You can see some example pages here.

I'm aware that in sharing what we've found helpful, I've only just scratched the surface of what's available out there (and I will be doing another post later with recommendations for other books and music as well).  Please share what resources have worked well for your family for reading the Bible with your kids and teaching them how to read it on their own.