5 simple ways to add Bible into your Homeschool

Adding Bible study into homeschool is tricky because it's the most important subject we have, but it can very easily become the most dreaded subject too.

I used to think my boys got enough Bible between Wednesday night AWANA and the scripture sprinkled through out the other subjects we were studying.... 

But I realized I was missing out on a crucial part of my job, and I was being lazy.  I am to teach God's word to my children.  I am to live it out and talk about it when we sit down, when we rise up, and all the times in between.  I was slacking off and feeling crushed under the guilt of it.  Because, honestly, some days homeschool is EXHAUSTING. When I'd lay in bed at night (those guilt-ridden minutes before sleep graciously takes me), I'd be so overcome with discouragement and guilt and hated feeling that way.

I knew there had to be a better way.

Last year was an experiment year.  I tried a few curriculums, a few things on my own, and we found some things that always worked for us, and made Bible time enjoyable.

Audio--Audio Bibles are great! We love the dramatized versions the best.  There are hundreds of free versions online.  Each morning, we'd listen to one chapter.  Easy and fun, which makes it do-able for me, and because they like them so much, it encourages them to get up, get their chores done, and get to the table so they don't miss it!

https://www.biblegateway.com/resources/audio/

http://www.bible.is/

https://www.faithcomesbyhearing.com/ has different 30 min podcasts that are great to listen to, we used it a lot during lunch time.

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Visual--My sons learn very well visually, and I asked them to doodle while we were listening to the audio Bibles (after a few doodles of battle tanks and war scenes, we had to institute a rule of doodling what they were actually listening to).  

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Discussion--After listening and doodling some days we'd take time to talk about what we had learned.  Most of the time this was just talking about what they had doodled, but their insight and understanding often times caught me off guard.

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Scripture memory cards--I didn't want to have memory be a high stress part of our school, since it's not about how much you can remember, but more about building up a "library" of God's word in their heart to use throughout their life.  This Charlotte Mason system has worked really well for us for years.  It's kind, easy, low-key, but incredibly effective.

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Transcribe--Our favorite way to write out the word is to divide their notebook page into three big sections.  In the top row they write out the Bible verse (or verses) that they're assigned (Copywork WIN!).  In the next row they write the verse in their own words.  In the final row, they write it out as if they were explaining it to a small child... we'd write it out like we were telling it to one of their young cousins.  Older kids were given multiple verses, younger less. 

And if you need to fit in some more Bible time for yourself, I have some fun, visual, and very approachable Bible studies written just for busy homeschool moms.   They are a creative approach to inductive Bible study, with no artistic skills needed!

 You can see them all here:  http://www.stonesoupforfive.com/p/store.html