Bible Lessons

One of my favorite times of the day is sitting down and doing a Bible lesson with Merrick.  These times really mean a lot to me.  

Initially, we started off using a free online curriculum from God's Hand in Our Lives.  GHIOL has been so helpful because it is broken up into stories within the Old and New Testament and then broken up into levels for different age groups.  I would simply give Merrick (and Scout and Sawyer if they weren't off breaking something) the coloring page while I read the Bible story.

Pretty soon, I figured out that Merrick is not really into coloring so much.  He doesn't like any kind of busy work or worksheets.  He likes hands on activities.

It's also been helpful to visit Sunday School sites to get very simple activity ideas that reinforce our Bible story.  Here is Merrick building the Tower of Babel (or Tower of Bubble, as Merrick likes to call it) out of play-dough.

His favorite part of this activity, of course, was smashing it after building it.  What is it with boys and destroying things?

More recently, we've been simplifying our bible times even more.  I have been using this Bible (below), which is the bible told in stories.  This is the very same Bible my parents read to me when I was a little girl.  I remember sitting next to my Daddy every Thursday evening as he read us a story from this book.  After our Bible time, we had Little Ceasar's pizza and watched the Cosby Show.  :)

Merrick loves the illustrations in the book.  It really is beautifully done.  He pays such close attention (or, at least, better attention) when he sees a picture and gets to see the characters in the pictures.  I have been so, so impressed by his ability to remember the Bible story later in the day or even later in the week.

I am so grateful for the opportunity to education my son from home and to be able to teach them about the Bible.  I don't think I would have ever gone into such depth with our Bible story if we weren't homeschooling.