One of the greatest difficulties facing the Christian parent in taking charge of their child's education is the question of the Bible. Many curricula offer courses on "Bible" or theology, but oftentimes the parent has to carefully "correct" the texts used for the subject.
There is no need to purchase a curriculum for the subject of "Bible", all that is really needed is a Bible and a systematic method.
The first thing, and most important thing, is to understand that "Bible" is not just one subject among many others, like science, math, reading, grammar, history, etc. The reason for teaching the Bible is to lead one's child to a saving relationship with Christ and a continuous growth in the grace and knowledge of Him.
It is therefore of the utmost importance that the parents be living by Biblical truth. The Scriptures must form the "home charter" by which the entire family and household is governed. The parents must be living a life of obedience to the Word, and must demonstrate to their children that all questions and controversies and decisions and plans and the entire "lifestyle" of the family is decided by prayerful recourse to the Word.
Parents must take on the responsibility of actually
discipling their children. Truth must be taught by both precept and example. By precept, in that the Word is the guide to all activity. And example, in that the parents demonstrate in their daily life how the Word is lived out (godliness).
To provide a Biblical education concerning the precepts of the Bible means to teach children what the Bible is, how it is used, how to study it, and how to apply it.
To provide a Biblical education concerning the example of godliness means to show children how the Bible's teachings affect decisions and lifestyle, by means of actual examples.
For example, one may teach what the Bible
says about prayer, and then one must
show how those teachings are applied by
actually praying with your children regularly.
To teach children (or anyone, actually) how to handle the Word of God effectively, so as to learn it's teachings, the following program is recommended:
1. Introduce the Bible as "the Word of God", that is, God's message and instruction manual to us.
2. Teach by memorization and narration (drill and recitation)
the main divisions of the Bible: Old Testament (before Christ) and New Testament (since Christ); OT is divided into the five Main Divisions:
Law (Pentateuch, or Five Books of Moses),
History (Joshua - Esther),
Poetry and Wisdom (Job - Song of Solomon),
Major Prophets (Isaiah - Ezekiel), and
Minor Prophets (Hosea - Malachi). The NT is divided into
Gospels (Matthew - John) and
Epistles (Romans - Revelation). This gives a total of 7 Main Divisions. The NT can be further broken down as Epistles of Paul (Romans - Hebrews), General Epistles (1 Peter - Jude), and the Apocalypse (or, Prophecy, or Revelation - the book of Revelation).
3. Provide a daily family Bible reading schedule. A comprehensive and effective and mildly rigorous schedule can be found here -
http://www.apostolicfriendsforum.com...ad.php?t=51557
4. Provide a weekly family Bible instructional schedule, where the father (if available) teaches the family from the Bible. A simple method can be to start with the Gospel of Mark, and go through the book chapter by chapter, verse by verse. Once completed, the book of Acts can be next, with that followed either by Romans, 1 Corinthians, Hebrews, or James. Eventually, the entire Bible should be gone through. This is important as it teaches the children by example
how to teach the Bible to their own families.
5. Instruct the student to make a Bible Study Notebook. It can be simply a spiral bound blank notebook. You will assign a book. The Notebook will be dedicated to that book. They are to prayerfully read the book through once, from beginning to end. Then, they are to re-read the first chapter, and note the following:
Commands
Promises
Warnings
Examples
Under each heading they are to identify the verse(s) that present a command to be obeyed, a promise to be believed, a warning to be heeded, and examples to be followed (as well as examples NOT to be followed). They should copy the relevant statement from the Scripture and give the verse number for each category. They can read the chapter once looking for commands, then again looking for promises, and so forth. When completed, they should read the chapter again to make sure they do not miss anything. They can also write down anything that stands out to them. when the chapter notes have been completed, they should be able to narrate to you (orally, or written, depending on age and skill) what the chapter was about. You should work through one chapter with them, showing them how to do it, letting them watch you actually do it.
Upon completion of the books, they move on to another book. The particular schedule used should begin with rather short books and progress to longer. The goal is to eventually have a notebook completed for each book of the Bible.
6. Teach them how to use a Concordance. Strong's is great, no so much for the Dictionary aspect, but the actual Concordance (finding verses that contain a particular word, etc). E-Sword and My-Sword (phone app) are also good for this. Show them how to look up a word in the concordance and find where it appears in the Bible.
7. Whenever giving an assignment for reading, or writing, as part of another subject, try to include Bible passages as much as possible. For example, if the student needs to write a short essay, they can write an essay that requires using the Bible as the primary source text. If they need to study poetry, they can study metrical versions of the psalms. Try to incorporate Scripture into every subject as much as possible.
8. Periodically introduce "doctrinal studies", say once every three or four months. This will be an assignment where the student will be required to narrate (oral or written) the Biblical truth on a particular subject, after having used a concordance to find relevant verses on the subject. This will probably need to be modeled at first, where the parent will walk them through it and show how it is done. The student may or may not produce a Scripturally accurate presentation of the particular topic, but that will be corrected by the parent who will provide the relevant correcting verses, as well as using discussion (see next point). The goal is for the student to be able to sit down and present the Bible truth on a particular topic, so that for example if they find themselves witnessing they can walk through the Bible and show why and how whoever they are talking to can be saved. Essentially they are learning how to not only discover the Bible's teaching on particular subjects, but how to present and teach it to others.
9. Have family Bible discussions about something that is read in the daily Bible reading, or the weekly Bible teaching, or that was brought up in church, or in their own Bible study. The discussion should allow for questions about the meaning and application of the text. Differences of opinion are allowable but should be understood as differences in level of understanding, and perspective. The goal is to arrive at a correct understanding of the text. This may require some argumentation. If one person thinks a verse means one thing, but another person thinks it means another, then both sides should be prepared to discuss and even debate the text. This will be awkward at first if you are not used to it, but shortly the family will be able to have an intelligent Bible-based theological discussion. The father should try to guide the discussion by providing some general guidelines, such as "what we want to do is discover the meaning of the text, and how we each understand it, and see how we can all learn from one another". And then let the family go at it.
10. Use the historical portions of the Bible (Genesis, Exodus, the History Division of the OT, the Gospels, Acts, etc)
to teach at least one year of "History". There are a number of resources that can help you identify the proper times, dates, etc of persons and events, many of them are free online or in libraries. You can also use a good Bible Dictionary or Encyclopedia if you have one. Correlate the historical event with any Major or Minor Prophet and their writings. Create a timeline and as the student studies a particular event in history, mark it on the timeline at the appropriate year, along with a reference to the appropriate Major or Minor Prophet. Or, create a Book of Centuries (google it, it's easy). Better yet, have the student create a Book of Centuries or timeline. Present Old Testament history, with the historical books of the Old Testament as the primary history text. Include additional references to Egyptian history, Greek, Roman, etc as they apply.
The method to learning is essentially narration: the student is exposed to information, studies the information, then orally narrates the information back to the teacher. It will be difficult at first but gets much easier with practice. The teacher will ask leading questions AFTER the narration is completed to cover anything major that was missed in the narration, or if the student is a beginner and has trouble narrating the questions can be asked to sort of "spur" the student on.
This approach, if done consistently, will provide the child with a better, more comprehensive and exemplary Biblical education than anything provided for by a curriculum. Especially as the child grows up in a family environment where the Bible is the governing charter or constitution of the family and its lifestyle.
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