Scripture Ideas For Kids- The Red Headed Hostess
Hey Everyone!
I was just featured in a Mormon Times article about the importance of scripture study for small kids. You can read it here.
And on this note…
I am working on a few posts concerning some of the questions I often get emailed to me, and one of them is about this very thing. Basically the question is:
What are some ways I can teach my children the scriptures effectively?
So, as I am gathering my thoughts… I would love to hear what you have done. So please share! Your ideas may help other families!
Also, check out our website here.
We have young children (8, 8, and 7) and for the past several years we have read the Book of Mormon every night 5 verses at a time. This lets us have time to talk about the verses and isn’t too much at the end of the day that they stop paying attention. Often we stop right in the middle of a story and it leaves the kids excited to read the next night.
On Sundays we will read a little longer so we let the older kids (7, 5 and 3) draw as they are listening. They pick out certain words (baptism, world, prophet) then make a picture of it. This helps for longer listening. We also found this bookmark via pinterest: http://mymixofsix.blogspot.com/2011/01/bookmark.html and it has been SO FUN to reach these milestones together as a family during our first time reading the BofM all the way through 🙂
I’ve written what we do before on my blog. We call it our Scripture PJ’s. You can read about it here: http://chocolateonmycranium.blogspot.com/2011/10/scripture-pjs.html
Consistency and reading straight from the scriptures has been most beneficial for our family.
I love Elder Holland’s counsel to be conspicuous in living our religion around our children. I am a private person and love my private study time, but after I heard his talk about this, I started studying at a time and in a place where my kids could catch me in my scriptures. My parents did this. When we’d get out of bed in the morning, my mom would be at the table reading her scriptures and my dad would be on the couch with is – or late at night. At least once a day I saw them studying the scriptures and praying. I caught, in addition to being taught, what was important to them and my curiosity was piqued.
With our kids, we read together each night before bedtime. My husband and I each read three verses, our 7-year-old reads two verses, our 5-year-old reads (with help) one, and our 3-year-old repeats several words at a time as I help her “read it”. We ask them to ask us if they don’t understand a word or are confused about who is speaking. We’ll stop in the middle of what we’re reading to testify about a verse or a principle.
Sometimes it is absolute chaos to read scriptures together. Kids are kicking kids or pulling at hair or poking a sibling in the side. Sometimes there is whining and someone gets carried to bed early because they are throwing a fit. But it’s become such a special tradition, that they calm down and ask to come back. They stay even if they’re in a sassy mood and are acting like they’re not listening. I know that game. I used to play it. I was listening when I threw the sulk fits too. Those are actually the lessons I remember the most.
We talk about the scriptures and the stories often. I try to use them to illustrate what we’re teaching. The scriptures and the gospel aren’t separate from the rest of our life, they ARE our life. I only get a few short years to help them build upon a solid foundation before Satan begins to tempt them. I will do everything in my power to share my testimony and my love of the Savior and the scriptures and repentance with them. I don’t hide my weaknesses, they know them probably better than I do, and I share with them how I use the scriptures and the gospel to repent every single day. It is the joy of my life to testify of Christ, but it is especially sweet to do so to my children.
I am far from perfect. We do not have a perfect home. But I ask for grace for myself where I fall short so often, and keep working toward Him. He has taught me much about how much I need Him through my children. I want them to know I know it.
(Reference for Elder Holland’s “conspicuous” comment:
April 2003 General Conference, A Prayer for the Children.
Link: http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2003/04/a-prayer-for-the-children?lang=eng )
We listen to the Children’s Songbook songs on the iPod 9 million times a day.
We also listen to LDS Scripture Rock, which sets the scriptures from seminary mastery to music. (I honestly hate the one we have now because it’s different than the songs *I* learned in seminary, so every time a scripture comes on I get confused. Gah!) My son has a CRAZY memory so this has taught him 25 scriptures so far, plus he has all the Articles of Faith memorized. We’ve stuck him on YouTube and he likes to watch the videos of himself – it spurs him to memorize more things or something! (this one is my favorite http://youtu.be/ZU4MSCuZAco )
Congratulations Shannon! You do have wonderful ideas, so this is not surprising.
We don’t do it all the time during our family scripture time, but my 7 year-old loves to act out the stories as some one reads it from the scriptures.
One way we keep our boys (5 & 3) quite while we read is by giving them a gumball from their “Scripture Snakes”. These are easy to make: http://www.sugardoodle.net/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6815
The saying goes:
“Scripture reading can be fun
especially while chewing bubble gum
So grab a ball and start to chew
and when the flavor is gone you’re through”
They look at the pictures in the children’s BoM while we read. Then when we are finished I break it down into modern words like this “So Lehi is commanded to take his family and get out of town and they leave all their toys and nice things behind. Then after a long walk Lehi tells his sons they gotta go back and get the Brass Plates. But Laman and Lemuel are like, ‘No way! Its too far!” But Nephi says “I will go! I will do!” I do this with our scouts sometimes too and they love it.
We begin reading when they are first born – literally that very first day. Then we just keep going!
Like others, we have use the scripture readers before, but I find using the actual scriptures is our favorite.
My kiddos are 11, 8, 6, 5, 3, 1, and 9 months and five of them are little BOYS. This summer we read the entire Book of Mormon as a family. Totally doable. The first week or two we wondered if we could really do it (6 pages a day to finish in 89 days – summer time). It was HARD. We realized a few things over time:
The reverence increased and impacted our Sacrament reverence as a family.
They got used to scripture study being a larger chunk of time and settled in to listen/participate.
We occasionally broke it up by reading twice in a day (3 pages each time).
On Sunday we were allowed to listen to the Book of Mormon pages for the day with our Ipod hooked up to a speaker.
We’ve drawn scriptures, acted them out, and all the usual things too.
We have always read scriptures together each evening as a family but I was really wanting my pre-teenage children to learn to study the scriptures. Fueled by information I found here on your site and Chocolate on my cranium’s idea for scripture pj’s I came up with something that has been working for us. I spend time each day studying MY scriptures and the rest of the day praying for guidance to know what things God wants my kids to know. Then I fill out a little sticker for them to put in their journal with instructions of what to mark or what to look for in their reading. It is usually just a verse or two but the questions are making them think about what they are reading and they are gaining some study skills. I asked them what they have liked best about this school year so far and it was the added scripture study they like the most.
My sister came up with this idea. They were trying to get their boys (6&8) to start doing individual scripture study. They were inspired to do “Captain Moroni Training.” One FHE her husband talked about Captain Moroni and how he was a man of God but also a great Army Captain. He then told them they would start Moroni training the next day if any one wanted to. At 7:00 her husband went in and woke the boys up they jumped right out of bed to do Moroni training. They first start by doing individual scripture study but all together in the same room. After that they play strategy games (Chess, Checkers, Guess who…) for 10 minutes with dad. The boys absolutely love it and now occasionally come in to wake up dad to remind him of Moroni training! Who would not want to spend 10 min with dad every morning reading and playing games. I am thinking of doing Mommy & me time with my daughter in similar fashion.
My family made the decision to limit the reading to a page a day. At the time we had three learning readers and it took a long time to read. Now that they are older, in order to help them focus on what happened during our reading, they write the page headings we found on your blog on each page as we read. I try to ask them questions to reinforce and keep them all awake.
To help guide their personal study, I took the lessons you wrote for the basic principals, created a web in their journals then sent them to look up the scriptures. In contrast to the first, which shows their chronology of the scriptures, this helps them see the connections in the scriptures by topic.