Essential Homeschooling Tips (How to Homeschool Bible)
20-year homeschooling mother of 6 offers advice on how to teach the Bible for parents. Create your homeschool success story with these essential homeschooling tips.
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“God’s viewpoint is sometimes different from ours – so different that we could not even guess at it unless He had given us a Book which tells us such things…”
– Corrie Ten Boom, The Hiding Place
What legacy do you want your children to leave? What do you want them to be remembered for? Do you want them to be a:
- Famous sportsperson?
- Accomplished musician?
- Great lawyer or doctor?
Yes it’s good to ensure they have a strong academic education in the core subjects and are able to use their God-given gifts and abilities to celebrate all of God’s goodness and creativity, but this is all meaningless if they do not have the most important subject of all. The absolute number 1 essential homeschool tip I would love you to take away is that the Bible is hands down, the main subject you need in guiding your children in loving Jesus and having a personal relationship with Him as their Lord and Saviour. If this is what you desire for your children, teaching them the word of God is the most important thing they need. We cannot know God apart from His word.
A couple of years ago I read Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus, Nabeel Qureshi’s autobiography about his journey out of Islam and toward eternal life in Jesus. He had no Christians around him who could tell him why they believed what they believed nor who could defend their beliefs. This is sadly the case in a mostly Biblically illiterate church today. As homeschoolers, we have the time with our children to counteract this epidemic of Biblical illiteracy and the mass exodus of Christian teens and young adults away from a relationship with Jesus.
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12/02/2024 06:50 pm GMT
Many think the Bible is difficult to understand. Yes, there are some passages that are more difficult than others, especially when there is a lot of symbolism or allegory. The reason some books are trickier to understand is because they require an understanding of the whole Bible story and knowledge of some other books of the Bible as a foundation and precursor to what they are talking about.
A great place to start is in the Old Testament with the books of Moses (Genesis to Deuteronomy) and the historical books (Joshua to Esther). Reading Genesis through to Esther will give you the complete Old Testament narrative as the poetry and wisdom books as well as the prophets all fit in to the Genesis to Esther timeline.
In the New Testament, begin with at least one of the Gospels (Matthew – John) and the book of Acts to gain a quick understanding of the life and ministry of Jesus and the birth of Christianity and the early church. Starting in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, reading some of both Genesis and Matthew is a great way to start. We need to read the Old Testament in order to understand God’s plan and to see that His plan was and is fulfilled in the New Testament with Jesus’ birth, death and resurrection.
2 Timothy 3:14-17 says, “… continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.”
– 2 Timothy 3:14-17
Do we believe what God says in 2 Timothy 3:14-17? Do we believe Him when He tells us that, “… ALL Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable…”, every single book in the Bible? We may have been convinced by theologians that parts of the Bible are too difficult to understand for the lay person who is not a scholar. Who will we choose to believe, man or God?
When we first learn something new, it often does seem overwhelming because we really don’t know anything about it nor understand it at all. But… we just need to begin. Once we begin, the understanding comes little by little. What we once knew nothing about, gradually takes root in our hearts and minds as we see the pieces fall into place and our understanding and confidence increase. It may not come this week or even next month but start reading the Bible, a lot, and you will get to know the one true and wonderful, incredible God who created you.
As you read, your love for God and His word will grow. If we desire to know someone better and have a closer relationship with them but we never take the time to talk to them or most of all to listen to them, our relationship is not going to get very far. This is the same with God. How can we claim to know Him and have a relationship with Him if we never take the time to listen to Him? He gave us His word because He loves us and wants us to come to Him.
There is nothing we can learn from man or from our own hearts and minds that even compares with what He has written in the Bible. The Bible is the ONLY true and faultless, eternal and inspired word of God. It is our one true standard by which we can measure everything else in this world to know whether what we hear and know and learn is true or not. We cannot claim to have the whole truth until we have God’s word in our hearts and minds.
Read the whole Bible through
Read the whole Bible through, several times during your children’s school years. Read large chunks at a time and read whole books of the Bible through.
I am not a fan of most devotionals. Devotions may be fine if you are doing this as well as other Bible reading and study but if this is all you are doing, your children will not know the Bible and God’s big story before they are adults. Any verse or two can be taken out of context to promote someone else’s theology so it an easy way to fall under false teaching. When you do a devotion that covers only a verse or two, most of the words you are reading are those of man not God. There is typically one or two verses at the top of the page and the rest of the page is man’s word that does not have the power to save. This is so unsatisfying.
God’s word always satisfies as it is the only one that feeds us and fulfils us and brings us closer to the One who made us, the One who created us to love and to serve and to know Him. If you want your children to gain a Biblical worldview, they must read the Holy Scriptures for spiritual growth and not the words of man.
Statistics
Let’s look at some statistics:
- There are 1189 chapters in the Bible.
- Now, if you are one of those families who diligently reads one chapter per day, every day of every year, you will get through the entire Bible in 3 ¼ years. This is great! Continue with this great foundation you are giving your children. However, if you are like many homeschool families who insert Bible reading into their homeschool schedule, you will possibly fall into one of the following:
- If you homeschool 5 days per week for 40 weeks of the year and read 1 chapter of the Bible each day with your children, you will get through the whole Bible in 6 years. This is not too bad. Your children will read the Bible through twice before they are adults. With taking so long to get around to reading the same passage again, they may struggle to see God’s big story but this is more than many families accomplish.
- If you homeschool 4 days per week for 32 weeks of the year (allowing days and weeks for outings, birthdays, holidays, camps, illness etc) and you read 1 chapter per day, it will take you almost 9 ½ years to read the Bible through. Your children will read through the whole Bible once before they are adults. They will struggle to see the big picture of God’s story and will be 9 1/2 years older than they first were when they once again start at the beginning of the Bible in Genesis.
- If you do a short devotional or read only a few verses each day during family Bible time, even if it is 365 days of the year, it will take you over 30 years to read through the whole Bible with your children.
These facts are startling and if we never take the time as parents to do the maths on our Bible reading, we will be caught unawares with teenagers who still do not know nor understand the Bible. These figures are based on just Bible reading alone without considering the time needed for deeper Bible study.
More Statistics
Now… let’s look at some more statistics:
- If you read several chapters a day just during school days, your children will read through the Bible several times before they are adults. This is a great goal!
- If you are reading just one chapter per day with your children, this may be appropriate for younger children but by the time they are 8, 9 or 10 years of age, they need to be reading much larger portions in order to follow the narrative and not just see the Bible as unrelated Sunday School stories.
- Even at one chapter per day, it will take months to get through the longer books where there are lots of genealogies and laws and land allocations etc. Of course you may want to skip some of these sections with younger children but the goal is that by the time they are teenagers, your children will be reading the whole Bible through.
- Reading several chapters per day means you will move through the whole Bible narrative much faster and will consequently understand the story better as you move at a much faster pace. This means you will all the sooner get to Joshua, then the Judges, then the Kings and Prophets and all that is happening with Israel during those times.
- Your children will be able to make connections and to understand that Israel’s exile from the promised land is the judgment for their unfaithfulness to the one true God and to be able to relate this to earlier judgments as they continue to read chronologically through God’s word. They will understand God’s faithfulness and that His promises are true as He brings the Israelites back to the promised land in the restoration period of Ezra and Nehemiah.
- Your children will be better able to see God’s big story rather than a whole heap of unconnected snippets as they relate all these events to the coming Messiah in the New Testament.
- They will see all the way that events in the Old Testament point to Jesus in the New Testament and the birth of the church after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension to the right hand of the Father.
- They will see that our future hope in our resurrection to eternal life always has been and always will be in Jesus because now they can understand not just the ‘what’ of God’s story but the ‘why’.
- They will see that the Messiah, Jesus of the New Testament, is the same Jesus who has been there from the beginning (Genesis 1:1 and John 1:1-3).
Be Consistent
Reading the Bible consistently, chronologically and in context by reading large portions at a time is one of the best ways to guard your children from false teaching. When someone asks them in Sunday School or Bible study, “What does this passage mean to you?” you want your children to confidently be able to respond that what it means to them is irrelevant. Scripture is not open to interpretation based on our feelings or our experiences or our culture. God has given it to us intentionally, already embedded with the meaning that He intended. We need to desire to know what God means and how His word applies to our lives today.
Have your children move from the milk to the meat of the Word as young as possible. I wish I had done these figures above and redeemed the time not just with my own children but also with myself. During my early homeschool years with many young children, the only time I spent in the Word was during “school” time with my children or during family worship or devotions. I understand very well that there are times and seasons. For young mums with babies, little ones and little sleep, you are sometimes just in survival mode. But… when I was no longer doing night feeds, I later prayed for God to give me a hunger for His Word and He is so loving and faithful that studying the Scriptures is now my favourite thing to do.
If your children are all of reading age, you can assign roles as you read if appropriate, depending on what book and chapters you are reading at the time. If there is a lot of dialogue, one person can be the Biblical author/narrator of the book while the others, including young readers read the different parts containing speech.
Once you have made reading a daily habit, add more in depth studies and memory verses. The key is to keep it simple and just begin and only add more later once this has become an easy, daily habit. You will be surprised how much you will learn over time and how much you will cover, just by making a daily habit of reading large portions together. Don’t expect to understand everything initially. Be patient and allow yourself time. Most of all, pray before you begin reading and ask the Holy Spirit to give you understanding. He will be gentle and open up your understanding as you are faithful to read and to know Him better.
When you are ready, create a special Bible folder/binder for each of your children. Start with them narrating or writing a short summary, maybe just a few sentences of what you have read that day. By the time they get through the whole Bible, they will have a lovely, personal handwritten summary of the whole Bible for themselves. You can still do this with younger children as they narrate to you and you write for them initially.
Don’t start everything all at once but when you are ready, add in some Scripture memorization. There are a bunch of great Scripture memory songs on Youtube and Spotify. Add these to your playlists. After a while, your children may want to illustrate some genealogies or add some Bible maps and timelines to their folders. You could purchase a cardboard model of the tabernacle and assemble this together to give a scale model visual.
Tabernacle Paper Model (Charts)
$14.94
A great project and visual when you are learning about the tabernacle in Exodus.
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12/02/2024 03:58 pm GMT
Of course this schedule may need to be adapted for younger children with Bible stories and children’s Bibles for the very young or a reduced schedule with younger children, while gradually increasing the load as they grow older. Even with very young children, be sure to still read portions of the actual Bible with them. Once you read a story in the children’s Bible, go to the relevant verses or chapter in the full Bible and read this also so they can see the connection between the stories they hear and God’s inspired word. Whatever schedule you choose, Bible reading is a great way to start each homeschool day.
While reading the Bible, have a pencil and post it notes next to you as you read. Anything that you don’t know how to explain to your children, mark it and then research it later so you can discuss when you next come together.
Be open with your children about not knowing all the answers but show them that you are willing to find out. You want to know what God is saying to you. Sometimes, some seemingly difficult Bible passages can end up having very simple explanations, especially when read in context with the verses and chapters around them.
These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.
Acts 17:11
I am not at all discouraging you from taking your time and studying a book of the Bible in depth with Bible studies but if we want to make God’s Word central to our lives, we must get past thinking of it as a token devotional part of our day. If you are feeling overwhelmed, don’t get bogged down in Bible curriculums, memory verses and tests. Simply pick up your Bibles and start reading, a lot. Commit to making it the first half hour, 45 minutes or even an hour of your time at the beginning of the day, depending on the age and ability of your children. If you allow plenty of time, you will not be tempted to try to rush through in order to get to everything else.
A suggestion would be to read through the Bible in chronological order, several chapters per day starting in Genesis, while also reading another book such as one of the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke or John) at a slower pace and studying it more in depth as you go. This way you can focus on key words, themes and cross references in order to see the deeper truths of what you are reading. Take your time with this one book and cover just one chapter per week with a more in depth study, while continuing with your chronological reading of several chapters per day in the Old Testament.
Caveat
All of the above is an ideal, a goal for which to aim. If you have young children or older children who have never read the Bible before or if you are a new homeschooler or a baby Christian, be kind to yourself. Lower your expectations and start slowly with a shorter passage of Scripture.
Read one chapter per week as mentioned above so that you begin with just a few Bible verses each day and just discuss what you read in your family Bible study time. Maybe start with one of the gospels at one chapter per week and also read through Proverbs at one per week. Have fun with Bible verse memorization so that God’s word is hidden in their hearts. Once you have made your reading a daily or “several times a week” habit, then slowly increase the load to get to where you want to be.
If your children complain, mix it up a little using the resources below but don’t give up. Make use of audio Bibles during quiet time or when you are all in the car together. If you give up, you will look back at the end of the school year and see all that you did not accomplish. If you keep moving forward and build this habit into your daily routines, even if it you start with just a few verses, you can look forward to seeing at the end of the year, how far you have all come and how much more you know of God’s story.
Remember, the Bible is God’s story and it is about His plan of salvation for you and me. Pray that the Holy Spirit will guide you and your children into understanding and a deeper relationship with Jesus.
I will be covering how to read and study the Bible in much greater depth in Storyschooling lesson plans. All of the above suggestions and below resources will be collated for you into daily lesson plans so you do not have to spend the thousands of hours of work and research I have taken to pull all of this together. Year 1 of a 4-year rotation: Storyschooling Bible and Church History lesson plans will be released in 2025. Join the Storyschooling Biblical Literacy & Book loving community here or follow us on Instagram, Facebook or Pinterest if you want to know when lesson plans launch.
Bibles & Resources
Here are some of my favourite Bibles and resources to get you started on your Biblical literacy journey:
ALL AGES
Blue Letter Bible Chronological Reading Plan
This is a helpful chronological reading plan that keeps the narrative of God's story in tact while inserting the poetry and wisdom books as well as the prophets into the historical timeline.
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Bible Bookcase Wall Chart (Charts)
$12.99
This is a great poster to keep permanently up on your wall as you learn the order of the books of the Bible by heart.
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12/02/2024 03:28 pm GMT
Giant 10-Foot Bible Time Line (Giant 10-Foot Time Line)
$11.65
This is perfect for gaining an overview of what happens and when it happens in the Bible. You can see approximate dates of the events and where they fall in relation to other Biblical events. This will help you and your children understanding the big picture of God’s story. The details will come as you read through your Bible.
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12/02/2024 03:28 pm GMT
Bible Story Map Poster - 2 sided 27inch X 37inch Large Map - Blank map on back for educational games and memorization
$32.99
A great quick view map for seeing the location of major Biblical locations and events.
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12/02/2024 03:28 pm GMT
Tabernacle Paper Model (Charts)
$14.94
A great project and visual when you are learning about the tabernacle in Exodus.
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12/02/2024 03:58 pm GMT
Chronology of the Bible
$4.64
More detailed than the giant timeline above that you can keep in the front of your Bible for easy reference.
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12/02/2024 03:58 pm GMT
NASB Complete Audio Bible
$18.13
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12/02/2024 03:58 pm GMT
Audible Subscriptions
AUDIBLE
Access thousands of audio books and Bibles here with Audible annual membership.
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AGE 6-14
NASB, Adventure Bible, Hardcover, Full Color Interior, Red Letter, 1995 Text, Comfort Print
$16.50
Age 6+
This is a great full text Bible for children without commentary. Includes helpful notes and historical and cultural details for context as well as maps and many other features.
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NKJV, Adventure Bible, Hardcover, Full Color
$17.56
Age 6+
This is a great full text Bible for children without commentary. Includes helpful notes and historical and cultural details for context as well as maps and many other features.
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TEENS & ADULTS
These Inductive Study Bibles do not contain commentary but instead encourage you to observe what you are reading yourself, taking note of particular key words and themes as you read. This is a great Bible that can grow with you in your Bible reading and study journey. You can start off by simply reading and then when you are ready to do some more in depth study, utilise the instructions at the beginning of the Bible and in the introduction to each book. They are there, ready to help you observe, interpret and then apply what you have read. The observations will help you to see connections between particular themes and books of the Bible, better understanding God’s big story and His plan of salvation.
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12/02/2024 04:18 pm GMT
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12/02/2024 04:58 pm GMT
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12/02/2024 06:06 pm GMT
Storyschooling Lesson Plans
Storyschooling Bible & Church History Lesson Plans
Coming 2025!
A 4-year rotation through the whole Bible & church history.
- Prioritise Biblical literacy and truth (1 Thessalonians 2:13).
- Examine false teachings (Acts 20:27-32).
- Journey with missionaries.
- Study Bible geography, maps & timelines.
- Read apologetics and worldview books.
- Build all other subject areas upon this foundation.
