Any time of year is really a good time to do a family Bible Study, but some seasons are busier than others.
During the fall, there is the excitement of being back to school and getting used to all the new books and materials. Then during the holidays it seems like every minute of every day is crammed full of appointments, parties, and obligations (at least for my family.) Springtime brings with it the beginning of sports and lessons.
This is why I believe that summer vacation is the perfect time to dive into a Bible study with your children. Whether they are in school or homeschooled, most children have the summer months off. Here are some reasons why you should do a Bible study this summer and my review of the new Moses Bible Study by Grapevine, as well as some ideas on how to incorporate outdoor activities.
1) Stop the summer “brain drain”- If we’re not careful as parents, summer can be a time of regression, academically speaking. I know as a home-school mom, I don’t want to spend a bunch of time in the fall re-teaching and getting back on track. I’d like to stick with a quick review and then dive right in to the new year’s lessons. I’m sure teachers are the same way, and I know all you parents don’t want the frustration at homework time with a child that forgot how to work over the summer.
This is why Grapevine Studies are so awesome. Not only are they chock-full of Bible, they also incorporate reading, memorization, dictionary skills, history, and geography. And the lessons are short! If you do a page each day (recommended), it only takes about 20 minutes-40 minutes, depending on how in depth you want to go and if you add any activities.
2) Make your summers intentional- How many times have you changed your calendar over to September and wondered where the summer went? If you put some time into studying God’s Word with your family, at least you will feel like you accomplished something worthwhile.
3) More time to go in-depth- Maybe you already do Bible studies as part of your curriculum during the school year. The benefit of also adding one into the summer months is that summer affords you more time to dig deep and get the life lessons out of the Word. Bible isn’t just one subject on your daily list. It is the subject.
Another thing I like about Grapevine is they are very factual. They have the main points of each of the verses laid out for you. But you use your own Bible to look up the verses, and you teach the character lessons you want your children to learn. Grapevine is very Biblically sound, and you add in the doctrine. These studies would be great in any home, and even in Sunday School!
My kids being goofy and my baby helping out.
What I Thought About the Moses Bible Study
This is my second Bible study from Grapevine. I love them and believe they are the best out there.
The creators of Grapevine really know their facts, and they put them together in such a way that makes them fun and educational at the same time.
The Moses study is their newest addition. It follows the life of Moses from his birth until he leads the Israelite’s across the Red Sea.
Here is a peek into the first lesson in the study:
We start off with prayer each time, and then we fill out the timeline for the section. The timeline is like a little preview into what we will be learning. The teacher’s guide gives you little snippets of info to say to the children while they draw in (or trace) stick figures on their pages. I am using the e-book versions, so I printed out the whole study for each of us and put them in 3-ring binders before we ever got started.
There are 2 ways that you can do the timeline. You can either fill it out in it’s entirety before moving onto the lessons, or you can do it piece by piece before you do each lesson. I chose to do just the section of the timeline that we would be working on for each lesson this time.
The first lesson (lesson 2 after the timeline) is the Birth of Moses. This follows Exodus chapter 1 when the Hebrew population grew in Egypt, tells about their slavery, and continues until Exodus 2:10 when Pharoah’s daughter adopts and names Moses. The memory verse for this lesson is Exodus 2:10. It is a long verse, so for young children you may want to just do the second half, or split it into two parts.
To help with memorizing, I wrote the verse on sentence strips and had my son unscramble them.
Putting the verse in the correct order.
During this first lesson, we took some time to talk about whether we should obey man’s law when it goes contrary to God’s. The midwives were told to kill all male babies, but they didn’t and God blessed them because of it. Pharaoh could have killed them for disobeying him, but they still chose to obey God.
When we learned about Pharaoh’s command to kill the babies, my 5-year-old daughter exclaimed “How rude!”
At the end of this first lesson, we were able to talk about the responsibility of looking after your siblings. It was good for my children to ponder what would have happened to Moses in the water if his sister hadn’t followed him to look after him.
We also spent some time outside during this lesson.
My children pretended to make bricks in the hot sun like the Hebrews were forced to in Egypt.
We also went to the creek and re-enacted the Princess pulling the baby Moses out of the water and Miriam running up and offering to get a maid to care for the baby.
I believe children learn by doing, so being able to go outside and spend some time acting out these scenes have really made a difference in how my children remembered the lesson. This is another great reason to do this study over the summer.
You could take it with you camping, hiking, or to the water and pretend like you are the characters in the stories.
All this fun we had, and it was only the first lesson! There are 13 total lessons in this particular study, so you will have lots of opportunities to learn along with your children and come up with fun activities together to go along with the lessons.
Click here to be taken to the Grapevine website.
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