Posted in Faith, Family, tagged Bible, bible verses, Craft, Easter, Family, Fun, Kids, Resurrection Eggs on 31 March, 2010| 6 Comments »
Just remembered: here’s a page with the verses for the Resurrection eggs, so you don’t have to retype. Just print out and cut them up. We Vicar’s wives need all the time-saving help we can get.
We’ll be getting our older two to find the verses in the bible – it’s good practice!
Posted in Bible study, Faith, Family, Kids, tagged Beginner's Bible, Beginning with God, Bible, Children, creche, Good Book Company, Kids, pre-schoolers, Sunday school, toddlers on 10 February, 2010| 6 Comments »
Stuff that I have to think about hard doesn’t often make it onto the blog. I’m busy. And lazy. So despite my best intentions, my reviews of children’s bibles, about which I think I have a bit to say, are so far limited to one. And anyone who reads my Twitter stream would probably deduce that if I can’t clear mould from my windows, other stuff doesn’t always get done either.
Despi
te my general ineptitude, those excellent people at the Good Book Company still somehow thought that I might be a suitable person to review their newest bible study booklet. I’ve already had it a couple of weeks and wanted to share my enthusiasm for it with you.
They have come up with a great addition to the range. It’s called Beginning with God and is subtitled ‘Exploring the Bible with your child’ and ‘Bible discovery for pre-schoolers’. The colourful cover invites you to ‘Taste and see that the Lord is good’ and inside are 29 studies from Genesis and the gospels.
I haven’t test driven the studies in the Vicarage (the Urban Pastor, has though). The Engineer is already reading for himself but I really wish we’d had this book a few years ago. I reckon you could start using it as soon as your child can sit up and take notice. Once your child can look at the pictures in a children’s bible, this book would be a very useful addition to the parent’s bible armour.
Beginning with God is designed for use with the Beginner’s Bible (which must be only children’s bible NOT in the Vicarage library). But it’s based so simply on well known bible stories that I think you’d get by with whichever one you already have.
Each study page is crammed with information, and can seem a little overwhelming at first glance. But after taking my time to read them through I became excited by the format, especially the many practical suggestions about prayer and making the bible story relevant throughout the day.
The studies are broken into appetisers, a main course and a snack for the journey. The appetiser menu is a great list of ideas of things you can chat about or do in introduction to your bible time. The main course includes prayer suggestions, a simple summary of the main truth learnt from the bible story and some great questions to ask your child. The snack is an idea you can carry with you through the day to continue the conversation about the bible reading.
It's sometimes hard to know where to start
The Vicar and I tried to do most of these things when the children were young, but it was so hard to know where to start, especially with the Queen, who was first. Neither of us had been brought up reading the bible regularly so we didn’t have a clue and bumbled along asking everyone we knew for their suggestions. This book would have been brilliant for us. And having run a 2-3s creche, I also think this book would be a great resource in a small church for the littlest kids group.
The book is also packed with bonus extras – stickers (the delight of every small child), craft ideas, tips on prayer and a cut-out-and-keep sheet of ‘snacks’ that you can shove in your pocket or handbag, to remind you to keep talking about God throughout the day. At £5 it’s quite expensive, but littlies love repetition – you could use this a good few times until the kids notice!
Posted in Faith, Family, Kids, tagged 5-7s, Bible, bible overview, bible reading, bible stories, Big Picture Story Bible, book review, Children, Christian, David Helm, Gail Schoonmaker, infants, Jesus, Kids, kids bible, reading, review, Under 5s on 10 November, 2009| 5 Comments »
Great for Under 5s
An age ago, I thought I’d start reviewing kids’ bibles. We must have about twenty in the house and most of them have been test driven on three children, so we’ve had a good overview. And since it’s be the sort of time of year when you might be thinking of gift shopping, I thought I’d share a few of our favourites. Different ages and personalities prefer different books and there’s also the aspect of trying to ensure that our kids don’t just hear Christian platitudes even at a young age.
We are not very routine people here in our Vicarage. So our bible time routine with the kids varies with the weather and has changed as the kids have grown and grumped and had fads. We do try to have a bible time with each of them every night. This is not always possible. For instance, if the Vicar’s Wife is on the phone to her sister and the Vicar is buying tickets for the Eurotunnel trip to France next summer and somehow the Queen is still in front of the fire reading stories with Happy at an hour way past her bedtime, she might go to bed with just a quick prayer. That was last night anyway.
But in the grand scheme of things, our routine is story-bible-pray-bed. With teeth and toilet somewhere in the equation. If you change the bible (or the study notes for the older kids) it does seem if there is some variety though. And our children seem to like that, especially the older two. The Engineer is more of a stick-to-what-you-know sort.
His favourite bible for a good few months was The Big Picture Story Bible. Big and with bold colourful pictures, it does what it says on the cover. But more than that, it points to Jesus, and the big picture of God’s work in the whole of the bible, all the way through. The strapline on the back of the book is
The Bible is a big book, about a big God, who keeps a big promise!
Inside, succinct text sits with the double page pictures, telling the story of how God’s people blew hot and cold in their relationship with him throughout the Old Testament. It speaks about the promise of God’s forever king, as the story points forward to Christ.
God’s forever people will one day live in God’s forever place under God’s forever rule.
It’s a great book – highly recommended for preschool children and also those still in the infants who’ve not yet had a bible overview. A 5-7 year old who is beginning to read could help a grown up tell the stories.
Posted in Bible study, Faith, tagged Bible, David Field, Ecclesia Reformanda, poetry, Ros Clarke, Song of Songs, study day, training on 12 September, 2009| 3 Comments »
Although I am sadly unable to attend myself (and my theological expertise may not be up to it) I would like to encourage my more expert readers to check out this training opportunity.
I know both the speakers well and have learnt much about the Lord from them both – they are godly Christians and wonderful communicators. I am sure that the day will be both stimulating and fun. You can check out both their websites.
Posted in Fun, Kids, tagged Bible, bible memory, Bigsby Show, Books of the Bible, Fun, Kids, New Testament, Old Testament, song, YouTube on 27 July, 2009| 4 Comments »
Since it’s the summer hols, posting is going to be a bit light. My brain is fried after nearly five months of Vicar’s Wifeing, but I’ll put up a few fun things over the coming weeks to cheer us all up as the rain reminds us we live in the Wet Midlands.
When I was posting the Seeds Family Worship kinetic typography the other week, I came across this song. It’s the best books of the bible song I’ve come across, and I’ve looked at a good few.
Please excuse the American pronunciation for various books (Isaiah, Hosea and Philemon) plus the references cited as being from ‘Psalms’. We are finding it easy to forgive them cos the kids love this song. But don’t worry, we’ll make sure they pronounce everything correctly (or at least with a Black Country accent).
Posted in Kids, tagged 1 Timothy 4v12, Bible, bible memory, bible memory songs, bible memory verse, Children, Kids, kinetic typography, Seeds Family Worship, Vicarage on 13 July, 2009| Leave a Comment »
I had a wonderful time on my conference last week, thanks for asking. But I need to catch up on the laundry whilst I compose a blog post or two. There’s lots of Vicarage news and I might even manage to share a few gems that I picked up from the saints I met up with whilst I was away.
In the meantime, here’s the newest piece of kinetic typography from Seeds Family Worship.
Posted in Bible study, Church, Faith, Fun, Radio 4, tagged BBC, Bible, English, English Literature, Lucifer, Paradise Lost, Radio 4, students, Today Programme on 19 February, 2009| 3 Comments »
I’ve got this post scheduled for today and another tomorrow so the computer can go in its box….
In the meantime, check your knowledge of the bible and English literature on the BBC website. I heard a chap on the Today programme on Tuesday talking about how the lack of basic bible knowledge meant that students of English literature were failing to grasp the depths of their subject.
Read it to do well in literature - and to find eternal life
My friend Starstudent was pleased to have studied the bible with me for a while, as it helped her to understand Paradise Lost in her recent literature course.
I got 9/10 on the quiz – caught out by Lucifer.
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