Category Archives: Bible lessons

Long Story Short: Abraham is Tested

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It’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted anything about our Bible lessons.  We’ve still been enjoying Long Story Shortby Marty Machowski, but I just really didn’t have anything additional to write about the weeks we spent on “God Rescues Lot” or “Isaac and Ishmael.”  I’m amazed at how much Ian (4 1/2) has been getting out of the nightly devotions.  Elijah (just turned 3) needs a little extra explanation, but even he has been learning a lot.  Every night as we pile on our bed for Bible time, Elijah gets a grin on his face and says, “Mommy, I know a Bible verse.”  I love the gleam in his eye as he says it.  He obviously realizes this is something important to me, and he’s excited to share.

The Gospel Story Bible: Discovering Jesus in the Old and New TestamentsI’ve mentioned before that we’re also using The Gospel Story Bible (also by Machowski).  To be honest, I wasn’t terribly impressed with it upon first glance, at least as a stand alone storybook.  However, I’ve come to really appreciate it as a part of our weekly routine.  The devotional readings in Long Story Short tend to break up the story over the course of the week.  We usually read from The Gospel Story Bible as an additional reading at the end of the week, and I love how it not only tells the whole story, but also incorporates the teaching about Jesus.  It provides a great summary and is the perfect way to close our week.

This week’s story was about Abraham being asked to sacrifice the beloved son he had waited 25 years to hold.  It led to some interesting conversations with Ian, especially about the idea of a parent loving God more than his child.  It’s easy to say this is our priority, but when we consider what God asked of Abraham we might have to do a heart check.  I know I did.  Children are such precious blessings, especially when they have been long anticipated.  I can only imagine the delight Abraham and Sarah took in watching Isaac go through each new stage as he grew up.  What amazing faith Abraham had as he set out to make the most costly sacrifice he’d ever offered to God!  (Imagine also what poor Sarah must have gone through when she heard the whole story!  I’m sure Abraham waited until after Isaac was safely home to fill her in on what God had commanded.)

As far as our lessons, we still haven’t added much as far as daytime activities other than watching two movies: Abraham and Isaac and Sodom and Gomorrah (which covers Abraham’s whole life).  We haven’t worked on any new memory verses or added anything to our Bible notebook.  Our schedule this fall just started feeling too full, but over the last week I’ve made some changes, and I’m looking forward to getting back into our regular groove.  Of course, with the holidays upon us it will probably be a while before things feel normal again.  This was actually our last week with Long Story Short until after Christmas.  Instead our Bible Time is going to be a chance to help our children view Thanksgiving and Christmas through a biblical lens.  We’ve already started talking a lot about the holidays, and I’m looking forward to spending the season soaking in the Scriptures!

Posted in Bible lessons, Long Story Short, Preschool, The Gospel Story

Long Story Short: The Lord Appears to Abraham

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Last week in our journey through Long Story Short by Marty Machowski we continued with the story of Abraham, and we finally got to throw in a few of the “extras” we’d been having fun with in the first few weeks of this year’s Bible lessons.  We watched VeggieTales: Abe & the Amazing Promise (over and over!) and taught the boys how to sing “Father Abraham” with all the motions (a great tie-in to the night where the devotional talked about how Abraham’s promised descendants included not only his natural children, but also spiritual ones who share his faith).  They ask us to do the song almost every night during Bible time, but I can only handle such pre-bedtime craziness about once a week.

We also worked on a memory verse, summing up the last few weeks with a verse from Romans: “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” Romans 4:3.  We got back to our reading practice by using the Bible memory verse cards I described in this post.  We also finally added another page to our Bible notebook.  (On one of our extra nights that didn’t have a devotional reading, we did a “review” and the boys went through each page of their notebooks, telling us what they remembered about that story.  Ian was excited to discover he could read all of the memory verses and begged to add another page so he could have more to read.)  I got the idea from Christian Preschool Printables, and just added a frame image and used glitter star stickers. (I had some trouble with the link to the file from the regular CPP site, but I managed to do a search and found that the links from this page work.)

  

And of course, we spent a lot of time on our “Listening Lesson”:

It was a little shorter than usual, but we’re running thin on Abraham material!  Still, as we discovered during our “review” night, both boys have been retaining a LOT of details about Abraham’s story because of how long we’re spending on it.  So I’m not going to worry about “extras” so much as we get through the rest of the story.

Posted in Bible lessons, Long Story Short, Preschool, The Gospel Story

Long Story Short: God Gives Abram a New Name

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“Never imagine you have rightly grasped a biblical idea until you have reduced it to a corollary of the idea of covenant.”*  When I was in college, one of our mandatory classes was “Theology of Ministry.”  Everyone was required to memorize this quote, and though it’s been more than fifteen years, it was so drilled into my mind that I can still remember it almost word-for-word.  As we spent yet another week on Abraham this quote came to my mind.  God’s covenant with Abraham was one of the most important events in the Bible.  If I were to sum up the major events of God’s whole “Grand Story” as told through the Bible, I would put it this way:

  1. God created the world as a place for his masterpiece, mankind, with whom He wanted to live in relationship.
  2. Mankind rejected God’s authority, believed the lie of the Enemy, and consequently caused sin to enter the world.
  3. Although sin separated man from God, He had a plan to redeem His Creation: He promised that someday He would send a Savior to crush the Enemy.
  4. Out of a world now ruled by sin, God chose one man, Abraham, who trusted in Him.  Because of Abraham’s faith, God made a covenant with him, promising to bless his family and from them to bring forth the Savior through whom he would bless all the families of the earth.
  5. Abraham’s family became a nation, Israel, the first to be “God’s people.”  Although they did not always follow him faithfully, through His relationship with Israel God revealed His nature: slow to anger, abounding in love, rich in grace.
  6. When the time was right, God sent the Savior, Jesus, who conquered sin and death.  Those put their trust in Him are grafted into “God’s people.”
  7. Jesus ascended to heaven, but someday he will return to fully establish His kingdom, and there will be a new heaven and a new earth, where God’s original intention will be fulfilled, and His people will live with Him for all eternity.

The story looks bleak until God’s plan is put into action, when He makes His covenant with Abraham.  This week in Long Story Short by Marty Machowski we talked about God changing Abram’s name to Abraham, which means “father of a multitude,” telling him, “I have made you the father of a multitude of nations” (Genesis 17:5).  His wife, Sarai, who has spent decades lamenting her barrenness, is told that “she shall become nations; kings of peoples shall come from her” (Genesis 17:16). I wonder what it must have been like to be Abraham and Sarah.  God has promised them something so incredible: not just the baby they have ached for and long since accepted as an impossibility given their advanced ages, but a major role in the Grand Story, one that encompasses all of history, from Creation to eternity.  I think they must have borne their new names with a sense of humility and awe.

I love that Long Story Short is making me consider such things.  The covenant between God and Abraham is at the core of our faith.  While the slow pace through these chapters in Genesis is making me do something a little different with our lessons, I’m still glad we’re using it.  Next week I’m planning to go back to a few of the activities we’ve done before, but for now we’ve just used the lighter Bible lessons to start a math program, focus a little more on reading, and spend time enjoying our composer study.

Even our “Listening Lesson” is less than what it usually is, but here’s what was on our playlist this week:

* After seaching for this quote online, I see it is from Paul Ramsey, but I can’t find any more information on it than that.

Posted in Bible lessons, Long Story Short, Preschool, The Gospel Story

Long Story Short: God Makes a Covenant With Abram

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http://b2bwithrobi.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/35-abraham.jpg

I think I’ve found my first complaint against Long Story Short by Marty Machowski, and that is the fact that he spends a really long time on Abraham.  Though really, that’s only been a negative as far as our related schoolwork is concerned.  It’s hard to find things to go-along with just the tiny sliver of the story we’re working on each particular week.  However, as far as our nightly devotions it’s been great.  The slow pace and repetition I’ve provided during the day has really helped Ian to understand the main points of the story.  Plus, it’s such a crucial part of the overall story of the Bible, so it’s one I really want to emphasize.

Once again, we took it easy last week, so aside from reading about Abraham inThe Rhyme Bible Storybook and The Rhyme Bible Storybook for Toddlers, all we really did was our “Listening Lesson”:

Posted in Bible lessons, Long Story Short, Preschool, The Gospel Story

Long Story Short: Abram and God’s Promise

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In my women’s Bible study group at church this week we were talking about how the early church had to wrestle with the concept of including Gentiles into the people of God after so many years years of following the commandments of God’s Law which kept Israel so different from the other nations.  I immediately flashed back to what we had read the night before with our family in Long Story Short by Marty Machowski.  God told Abraham, “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3).  That promise was made about two thousand years before the early church.  Throughout those two millenia, God had been laying the foundation through his interaction with Abraham’s descendants, preparing the way for the Christ who would open the way for all of us to return to the blessing of relationship with God.  The 1st century Jews knew the promise; they’d heard God’s reminders through the years about making them a light to the nations, yet when the time of fulfillment came, many struggled with knowing what exactly that should look like.  How hard it can be for us in our finite little minds to grasp where our situation falls in the big picture of God’s plan.

That’s one of my favorite things about using this devotional.  It helps me remember that the story of God promising to make Abram a great nation is about so much more than the life of a man who lived four thousand years ago.  It is part of MY story.  I’m not even part of Abraham’s family line, and yet I am blessed because of God’s promise and Abraham’s faith.  What seems like such a long story as you read through the Bible really is quite short when you get right down to it.

As far as lessons, we didn’t do a whole lot this week aside from reading the five devotions and the corresponding story from The Gospel Story Bible.  For one thing, we’re still settling into our fall activities and I haven’t yet found my “groove.”  For another thing, we’re going to be spending more than a month on Abraham, and most of the extra activities I’ve seen go long with other parts of the story. (We also were enjoying diving into our October composer study, starting a math program, and “rowing” and our Five in a Row book, so we kept plenty busy!) We did work on a memory verse (“By faith he went to live in the land of promise.” Hebrews 11:9), but other than that we took it easy and may continue to do so for another week, just doing Bible time each night and our “listening lesson” during the day.  Here’s what was on our playlist this past week:

Posted in Bible lessons, Long Story Short, Preschool, The Gospel Story

Long Story Short: The Tower of Babel

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This week we learned about the Tower of Babel.  I was surprised how much we were able to do with this story.  On the first night’s reading in Long Story Short by Marty Machowski, we read through Genesis 10, which contains the geneology of Noah’s sons. You would think that would be boring, but it actually led to a couple interesting discussions, including one about geneologies and ancestors.  We pulled out a family tree that we have on a large scroll, on which my husband’s side is traced back to the 15oo’s.  We talked about how if we knew who was on that “tree” before those ancestors, it would lead all the way back to Noah (most likely through Japheth, if the traditional understanding of the nations is true).  I don’t know if it meant much to the boys, but I was kind of awed by that thought.

Another logical subject to study along with the story of Babel was the idea of languages and nations.  Ian’s always asking what the Spanish words are for various things so he loved this part of our lesson.  I don’t know if Elijah understood the concept or not, but it was a nice introduction for him.  We listened to familiar songs sung in Spanish and samples of other languages.  I also showed the boys video from when I lived in Kenya and worked with Maasai still living traditionally in rural villages.  And we looked at Precious In His Sight, a book with pictures of children from various nations all around the world.

The reading for Day 5 was from Isaiah 1:18 “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.”  So for Bible time on one of our extra nights, I taught the boys the hymn, “Nothing But the Blood of Jesus.”  (We also read from The Gospel Story Bible one night.)*

Reading Practice

I didn’t do a whole lot of reading practice with Ian this time (we had a crazy busy week!), but here’s what we did read together:

  • The Young Reader’s Bible by Bonnie Bruno (he and I read this one together because he’s not quite ready for it on his own.)
  • Jibber Jabber by Mary Manz Simon
  • Ian practiced reading our memory verse, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” James 4:6 using the process I described in this post.

Bible Notebook

Our notebook page this week was simple: just a sheet with our Bible verse on which they build towers using “bricks” of construction paper.  I learned that it worked best to draw a line of glue and have them build a row at a time.  Otherwise we just ended up with floating bricks all over the page.

  

Activities

The boys enjoyed building towers with our stacking blocks (and knocking them down, of course).

  

I also printed out a dot-to-dot (pg.5 of the document) for them to do.  (I put things like this in sheet protectors so they can do them over and over again with dry erase markers.)

Multimedia

Our “Listening Lesson” included several children’s songs the boys already know, only sung in Spanish:

The kids enjoyed the Spanish songs so much I decided to purchase Cantos Biblicos, the Spanish version of a CD of Bible songs we already have in English.  (Actually, I downloaded the MP3 version because I’d collected a few MP3 credits in various ways and had been saving them for something school-related.)  My hope is that not only will the boys have fun learning Bible songs in Spanish, but maybe we can even use them in ministry someday!

*I also considered reading Acts 2:1-12 and discussing the story of Pentecost, but I decided that might be too confusing for preschoolers, though I’d use it with older children.

Posted in Bible lessons, Long Story Short, Preschool, The Gospel Story

Long Story Short: The Rainbow of God’s Promise

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Last week we continued in Long Story Short by Marty Machowski with the story of Noah’s ark, focusing on God’s promise, symbolized by the rainbow.  I love the connection between the ark and Jesus as the only way to be saved.   It’s taken me almost a week to write about it, and things are a bit hectic around here right now, so I’m afraid this is going to pretty much be the notes I jotted through the week just so I can get it all down for the record.

Go-Along Books

We kept out the books we read last week, as well as enjoying the story in The Rhyme Bible Storybook for Toddlers:

Reading Practice

  • The Young Reader’s Bible by Bonnie Bruno (Ian’s making progress on this but still isn’t quite ready to read it on his own.)
  • Cards to practice reading our memory verse: “Your steadfast love is great above the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.” Psalm 108:4

Bible Notebook

I used a picture from dltk-kids and put it on a page with our memory verse.  It was a good chance to talk about the colors of the rainbow, especially since the picture had room for every color in the spectrum!

Activities

We broke out our flannel board set for the first time in months, and the boys REALLY enjoyed retelling the story with it.  I can’t count how many times Elijah went over to it throughout the week and told the story, sometimes to one of us, but most of the time just to himself.  I LOVE having this out to “narrate” the Bible story.  It really shows how deeply they’re internalizing what they’re learning.

  

The boys had fun sailing the paper “arks” I folded for them.  (Ian tried, but it was too hard even for him.)

  

Multimedia

We watched VeggieTales: Minnesota Cuke And The Search For Noahs Umbrella (available streaming on Netflix).

Our “Listening Lesson” was the same as last week plus the addition of Genesis 8 with the end of the Noah story.

Wow, that’s a boring post.  I do apologize.

Posted in Bible lessons, Long Story Short, Preschool, The Gospel Story

Long Story Short: God Chooses Noah

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The story of Noah’s ark is possibly the best-known Bible story ever.  Seriously.  You can find books, toys, and even find nursery decor depicting the ark and the animals going “two-by-two.”  So I was certainly not at a loss for ways to fill our days with things related to our Bible study this week.  The challenge was choosing what to pick and helping impress the story upon my children’s hearts.  Our devotional, Long Story Short by Marty Machowski, spends two weeks on the account of Noah, so we’ll save some of my plans, though it may be difficult to top the fun we had this week.

As usual, we filled in two nights of Bible time on top of the five devotions in the book.  One night we read the story from The Gospel Story Bible, and another we chose one of our “Go-Alongs” and enjoyed the beautiful illustrations.

Go-Along Books

There are SO many books out there that retell this Bible story.  We had a couplealready, and I added a few to our library based on their illustrations or unusual perspective.

Reading Practice

Confession: I slacked in this department this week.  In my defense, I did succeed in getting Ian back into his Reading Eggs lessons.  (He’d gone through them so fast he got a bit ahead of his abilities and it was no longer fun, so I’ve been giving him a break while he caught up.)

We did practice reading with our Bible memory verse cards.  This week’s verse was short and easy: “Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him.”  Genesis 7:5.

Bible Notebook

I kept our Bible notebook page simple.  My original plan was using an image of the ark drawing from Jan Brett’s website and then having the boys put animal stickers around it.  However, when I went to my sticker collection I realized I didn’t have a very good selection.  So instead, we just used the Oriental Trading Company’s Make-a-Bible Story Stickers.  I was afraid it was going to be boring, but both boys really enjoyed making their pages.

Activities

We are still in the throes of summer heat, so I’m all about keeping cool these days, whether that means quiet indoor activities, water play, or air-conditioned field trips.  For Ian’s “workbook” I printed out DLTK-Bible’s Picture Clue Read and Trace pages, a “hidden pictures” page, a maze, and a dot-to-dot.  The boys had fun playing with their Playmobil Ark set in the wading pool one day.

  

The highlight of our week was our visit to the Noah’s Ark exhibit at the Skirball Cultural Center, which is kind of combination of a children’s museum, an indoor playground, and a playhouse.  All three kids were entertained for the full two hours we were there.  We went on Thursday, which meant free admission, so the only cost was the gas to get there.  Woohoo!

  

  

  

Because we hadn’t paid for the exhibit, I splurged in the gift shop on a 200-piece Noah’s Ark puzzle.  It’s a little too challenging for Ian to do on his own, but it gave us a fun activity together, and since he really enjoys puzzles I know it’s one we’ll pull out again and again as he gets older.

  

Multimedia

As you can see in the picture above, while Ian and I “puzzled,” Elijah was busy on the computer playing with the Noah’s ark activity from Charlie Church Mouse Preschool.

The boys really enjoyed our “Listening Lesson” this week:

As a final note, I’ve discovered that I enjoy our homeschooling experience even more when I enter into our lessons and try to learn something myself.  This week I indulged myself with a little “biblical fiction.” A few years ago while browsing at the library I found a book called The Heavens Before by Kacy Barnett-Gramckow, which is set at the time of the Flood.  I remembered enjoying it so I decided to get the whole Genesis Trilogy to read on my Kindle.  It has caused me to think about the biblical account in new ways, which is one of the things I appreciate about this genre.  I’m already into the second book, which takes place at the time of the tower of Babel.  I have a few other favorites and newly discovered novels from the Genesis time period waiting for me when I finish these!

Posted in Bible lessons, Long Story Short, Preschool, The Gospel Story

Long Story Short: Cain and Abel

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When we originally decided to use Long Story Short by Marty Machowski for both our family devotions and the basis for our Bible lessons, my mind automatically went into “school mode” and I scheduled regular breaks as I plotted the months up until Christmas, the first one being last week when we were heading off on vacation.  However, the boys have been so enthusiastic about Bible time every evening that Eric and I realized there was no real reason not to bring the book along with us and continue on.  The story for the week was on Cain and Abel, and it wasn’t exactly one I had a lot of “extras” planned for anyway.  So it was a lighter week, but here’s what we did.

In addition to the 5 nights of devotions in the book, we spent one night reading the story out of The Gospel Story Bible (also by Marty Machowski), and another night discussing Ephesians 4:26, which in the English Standard Version reads, “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.”  I thought it was an important verse for us to discuss with our boys.  Even at their young ages, they struggle with how to respond to their anger appropriately.  From some of the books I’ve read on raising boys, this is going to be a constant battle as they grow up.  We had a really good talk that night.  I think it meant a lot to them to know that we acknowledged the way they feel toward each other at times, while helping them to learn how they should respond.  Cain may not have set a very good example, but sometimes we can learn best from other people’s mistakes.

Go-Along Books

The one book we read to go along with this story was Cain and Abel: Finding the Fruits of Peace by Sandy Eisenberg Sasso.  It expands on the biblical account by including some ideas from Hebrew midrash, and the illustrations are bold and colorful.

Reading Practice

Because we were away from home, I didn’t try to find any easy readers related to this story, but I did bring along word cards for our Bible memory verse so Ian could practice reading and both boys could work on memorizing Genesis 4:7.  I also set the words to the tune of “Are You Sleeping,” and after singing it a few times they had it down the first day:

Sin is crouching (sin is crouching) at the door (at the door)

It’s desire is for you, but you must rule over it. Genesis four verse seven

Bible Notebook

Have you watched any of the What’s in the Bible? DVDs?  They are a fabulous tool for teaching about the Bible!  Ian is just starting to get into them, so we watched Volume 1 – In the Beginning, which gives an overview of the structure of the Bible and starts teaching about Genesis.  When it talks about sin, it shows these funny little guys clinging to people’s backs.  I was a little unsure of that way of illustrating sin, but we talked about what sin really is, and when we discussed our memory verse it helped explain how to “rule over” sin.

When I taught the boys the memory verse I acted out each phrase, and when we got to that last part, we stomped our feet to show we were ruling over sin.  So for our Bible notebook page, it seemed appropriate to do a paint footprint.  We made “doors” out of construction paper that opened up on the footprint.

  

This verse made a big impression on the boys.  Every night Elijah has added, “Help me to rule over sin,” to his prayer, and Ian loves talking about how he should “stomp on sin.”

Multimedia

We didn’t spend as much time as usual on our “Listening Lesson” this week, but here’s what it contained:

The catechism questions left off on kind of a dark note, but we’ll get to the good news as we go along!

Posted in Bible lessons, Long Story Short, Preschool, The Gospel Story

Long Story Short: Adam and Eve Disobey God

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Last week we talked about the first real pivotal story of the Bible: the Fall of man and the introduction of sin into God’s perfect Creation.  I continue to be impressed by our devotional, Long Story Short by Marty Machowski.  It is deep enough that Eric and I are getting something out of it, yet simple enough that Elijah (not quite 3) is learning as well.  Our nightly Bible time is a highlight of our day, and while we’re still working with the boys on how to be good listeners and not distract each other, both of them are eager to participate.  I especially like the prayer suggestions each day.  Every night Elijah continues to thank God for creating all the animals, and now after this lesson he’s been adding, “Thank you for hiding my sin.”  It always fascinates me to see what stands out to them.

Go-Along Books

Some of the books we had out for the lessons on Creation included the story of the Fall, so we kept those out for reading at looking at throughout the week:

Reading Practice

As far as books for Ian to read himself, we continued the same books from last week:

He also practiced with our Bible verse cards (see my last post for how I use them).  This week our verse was “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:23.  We had a few songs to go along with it (see our “Listening Lesson” below), and both boys memorized it easily.

Bible Notebook

The word “sin” in both Hebrew and Greek means “to miss the mark.”  It was an archery term that described something off target.  God’s perfect law is the standard to which we are all held (“Sin is lawlessness.” 1 John 3:4), yet we all fail to hit that bullseye.  As our memory verse says, we all “fall short of the glory of God.”  For our notebook page, I had the boys glue concentric circles to make a target, then we put an X to the side to show we had missed the mark.

Activities

Beacause this year is Ian’s official “Pre-K” year (if there’s really anything “official” about Pre-K), I want to put together at least some sort of portfolio for him in addition to his Bible notebook.  My plan is to have him use the Bible ABC pages from Christian Preschool Printables as copy work.  By the end of the year he’ll have completed the whole alphabet.  This week the “A” page was perfect for our lesson.

I also printed and laminated sequencing cards from mini-book at Christian Preschool Printables.

Multimedia

As I said, this week’s story is a pivotal part of the overall gospel story, which means there are many crucial concepts to understand within this one chapter.  Consequently, our “Listening Lesson” this week continued to include a lot of catechism songs from the Questions With Answers series from Songs for Saplings. We’ll be continuing to listen to these for a while to plant these truths in the hearts of everyone in our family. Here was our iPod playlist for the week:

Posted in Bible lessons, Long Story Short, Preschool, The Gospel Story
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