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When your child is done with children story Bibles, what then? How do you bridge the gap between stories and scripture? How to you move your child from adult-lead to personal quiet time?
Tim Keller echos this concern:
Why has so little attention ever been given to the devotional lives of children? Of course we should be doing all the stand things: teaching them the catechism, including them in family devotions, helping them participate in worship. But encouraging a child to develop his or her own devotional life has long been a missing piece that has direct effect on whether a child grows up with a balanced spiritual life or one that is dangerously one sided.
…While one book is not enough by itself to correct this imbalance, Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing may be the best, first introduction for children to have their own time with Jesus.
Isn’t that what I desire for my children, to move into the teen years knowing not only the stories of the Bible but the Savior of the stories?
The quote above by Pastor Tim Keller is taken from the forward of Sally Lloyd-Jones’ book Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing. If the author’s name sounds familiar, Ms. Lloyd-Jones is the author of the widely popular The Jesus Storybook Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name
While I am not a huge fan of the illustrations (It’s a personal thing – not that they are poorly done.), I love how this devotional helps bridges the gap between basic Bible stories and who God is and why we are created. The child learns how to include God in his or her daily life. Because of the abstract concepts and higher level thoughts, I would use this book with early elementary aged children after they have a solid foundation of the Bible stories.
Because this book is geared toward older kiddos, I wish the readers were a little longer. As I read them to my kids, I felt they were lacking something. Maybe a direct tie to Scripture? While a short verse and reference is given, I would love to see the reading discuss the Scripture specifically.
And as a side note, it would be nice for the book to contain a ribbon bookmark as it is meant to be a devotional. Obviously a paper bookmark works as well.
New Adventure Bibles
The Zonderkidz team has worked very hard to bridge the gap between children’s Bibles and an adult Bible with the Adventure Bible. Numerous options are available from toddler to elementary age. Here are the newest.
The Adventure Bible for Toddlers is for children ages 2-5
The Adventure Bible
~ Full color throughout – makes learning about the people, places, and culture of the Bible even more engaging
~ Life in Bible Times – Articles and illustrations describe what life was like in ancient days
~ Words to Treasure – Highlights great verses to memorize
~ Did You Know? – Interesting facts help you understand God’s Word and the life of faith
~ People in Bible Times – Articles offer close-up looks at amazing people of the Bible
~ Let’s Live It! – Hands-on activity ideas help you apply biblical truths to your life
~ 20 special pages – Focus on topics such as famous people of the Bible, highlights of the life of Jesus, how to pray, and the love passage for kids, all with a jungle safari theme
~ Book introductions with useful facts about each book of the Bible
~ Dictionary/concordance for looking up tricky words
~ Color map section to help locate places in the Bible
In writing this post I found the Adventure Bible website. It contains a plethora of games and activities for early elementary aged children. Take a look!
Do you have Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing or any of the Adventure Bibles? I’d love to hear how you are using them.
Thank you to Zonderkidz for allowing me to share these books.
