How to draw "the fear of the Lord"

We received a really great question from a parent of an 8 and 5 year old:  How do you draw "the fear of the Lord"?  It appears so often, I feel I need to include it.

Here are some ideas:

The "fear of the Lord" is kind of abstract, isn't it.  You can't draw it all by itself.  It reminds me of another abstract that we have had to teach our children:  the word "no".

With our oldest children, we didn't really consult God's Word too much; we were christians, but we relied on popular "wisdom" and we got the vibe that you don't teach "no" before age 2 or something like that.  I don't know, we just felt like it was frowned upon to expect little ones to understand that.  

The way it played out was that one day, we finally realized "This is ridiculous," and started telling our toddler "no".  So one day, they woke up, and there was this new expectation on them.  That went over less than stellar.  It made for a challenging and stressful transition to say the least.

With our last two babies, we taught "no" very early.  We started at around 5 or 6 months old!   It was easy!  Well, actually it was fun.  They would innocently grab an object, and we would say "no" (no spanking or yelling) and remove their hand.  Maybe we would do that 14 times in a row.  "No" doesn't mean much of anything without context.  So, we never just said "no" to them; we always said it in context with what he was doing.  No pictures! 

It was really teaching more than discipline.  That is what made it fun.  It was kind of an experiment.  (Like, we have experimented with at what age they would become ticklish as babies.)  When they started understanding "no", were just amazed.

A side benefit is that at this age, children have have very short attention spans.  So we didn't have to deal with the dedication and perseverance of a 2 or 3 year old wanting to jump off a table... and always getting there after impact.  When working with a little one, you have the benefit of their almost total immobility.  So all of our "no's" are successful; we can control their environment!  There is so much less stress just patiently repeating things to a 6 month old versus chasing down a 22 month-er who is RUNNING to the bathroom with the can opener.

Our youngest is a year now, and he understands "no" across many contexts.  If he crawls towards something and we say "no", he understands!  We haven't attained perfect obedience, BUT we do get some, plus we are seeing a child who is more content with not getting what they want all the time!  (Contentment is a lesson for LIFE!  We need it as much as he does!)  He understands "no" is a dead end, and, with his short attention span, he will then interest himself in something within his palette of choice, such as his toes or the corner of a table.

Well, that was kind of an aside, but the point is:  while "no" is very abstract, in context, it is completely understandable even to a very young child.  That transfers to the teaching of many concepts in the Bible.

An excellent article is "Teaching Our Children to Understand the Bible".  It gives concrete examples of defining such abstract concepts through studying the Bible as a whole.

Another booklet we have found helpful is "How to Teach Your Children a Verse a Day" on our website.  It gives many ideas for illustrating verses when you are not just talking about an ark or great fish.  

Cool homeschooling verses

Here are some cool homeschooling verses, 1 Peter 1:13-25

Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance: But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy.

And if ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man's work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear: Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you, Who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God.

Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently: Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.

For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away:

But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.

This scripture seems to give a good perspective for us as we raise our children, to keep our perspective on what really matters.  If we don't intentionally put this before us and our children, we could unintentionally teach our children that worldly things matter more than eternal.  We will not be teaching them to seek first the kingdom of God.

We have to do things differently from the way the world does things if we desire something different from what the world offers, especially in teaching our children.

Only the Word of the Lord endureth for ever.  

How can we demonstrate that to our children today?

More effort

The whole world understands that a doctor or an engineer can’t be trained in a haphazard manner. It involves continuous study for 15 or 20 years. But very few people realize that the study of the Word of God requires even more effort. If earthly things require much study, what of the heavenly? By not giving that much importance to the Word of God, the vitality of the church has fallen and become only a religious tradition.

This situation cannot be remedied with a week of evangelistic meetings or with a short Bible lesson every Sunday in Sunday school. It can’t be remedied with emotional praise services or with miracles or with divine healings. It can’t be remedied with dramas, missionary trips, and other activities for the youth in the church. The people get excited about such things, but the next day they return to their same lives of spiritual ignorance because they haven’t made the Word of God to be their principal meditation.

Modern Christians have given ten or twenty years of their lives to the study of this world’s wisdom in the schools, and only a few hours to the study of the Bible, which is the Word of Truth that God communicated to the world through his prophets and apostles, Jesus Christ being the principal expositor.

The only remedy for this lukewarm state of the church is to put our children to study the Bible as if it were the thing of most value in the universe. ✞

-  Art Dappen (1946-2006), author of The Education of Kings.  This article was excerpted from his newsletter, PlaticAMOS.

Following directions

Today, I sat with Joshie and we wrote a letter. He just turned 4 years old last week. I was thinking that I would share thoughts related to teaching reading with the Bible, because this is definitely laying groundwork for that, but not only that.

We are viewing reading instruction as a collection of many skills besides just sounding out words, so when we have him write, we try to keep that fact in view. Part of the skills employed are character related: in fact, on our best days, we consider all training just opportunities for learning character -- that is how the Lord even trains us as parents! Amen? (What I mean is, on our worst days, we get overwhelmed with A, B, C and operate in our own strength and waste opportunities. : ( )

So along with reading and writing, we work on following directions, obedience (very similar) and humility. The Bible says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. That sure goes against the wisdom of the world. And the partner of wisdom is humility, not self esteem.

When pride cometh, then cometh shame:

but with the lowly is wisdom.

Proverbs 11:2

Anyway, today he wrote a two page letter to Auntie Soozie. I wrote it down with him, for him, of course. I kind of cued him in as to what we'd be talking about. I wrote it down in a permanent marker, but I am thinking a thick highlighter pen would have worked better for this purpose. He traced it in a green colored pencil, which isn't the easiest to write dark lines with. Oh well.

I took this video after he was on page 2 and he was really picking up steam. This was a really good session with him, which doesn't always happen, but makes for some good illustrations which I will bring up after the viewer views it. (Actually, it would not be unusual to have him write just a one page letter, but this one just evolved into a 2 pager, and that turned out to be just about right for today. I think it takes discernment to know how much is too much, without being directed by the child. We want them challenged, not overwhelmed.)

Be warned, this video it might invoke some nausea as my video skills are not the best. But it is very sweet to me!

So, again, this is the part where he is picking up steam, with very little encouragement from me. We started off much smaller and less accurate.

Okay, so here are a few things:

Joshie can kind of imitate some letters (drawing them). In the past, I was of the opinion of its no big deal about how he makes the shape at this age, just that he makes it. But now it seems wiser to really work on the obedience/following direction angle. Not with the goal of perfect penmanship at age 4!! So, what he does is not the benchmark for every 4 or 5 year old, and some 3 year olds may do much better than he. This is what takes discernment and a proper mindset for me as mom. The goal is obedience, not penmanship perfection.

How we do it: After the letters are written out by me, I sit him nearby. I use a regular pencil and demonstrate how to properly trace the letter (that is, indicating where to begin, what direction to go, etc.). We use Getty-Dubay Italic series, so that is what he is copying (although my example letters are not as accurate as some of the other children's penmanship). I found it interesting that by page 2, he is remembering the way to form the letters much better and correcting himself if he does it wrong at first. (Believe me, he was corrected plenty on the first page, but by page 2, he is really nailing them!)

With Joshie we are needing to work on following directions, doing what he is told. So, I am not stopping to "praise" him every time he does it right. I know some curriculums will push that, positive reinforcement, and I am not at all saying I don't show affection or happiness. But we want to convey that obedience and following directions is expected, even if you are writing a letter.

We want to train our children to follow directions, not follow praise, because in the real world, you don't get praised all the time for doing right. That can even mess up our hearts. We want our "well done" to be in heaven.

As we worked on the writing, we were talking about what each sentence conveyed, talking about big letters versus little letters, the period, etc. Some of it over his head, no doubt, but just kind of planting seeds.

What is neat is that while laying the groundwork for teaching reading, we are doing something useful and something that contributes to his overall training. In a school setting, you pretty much have to keep hitting that hammer on the nail over and over, but at home, in real life, you can make so much more of the opportunities. Praise the Lord.

Home Education based on Matthew 6:33

We were recently asked to write up something describing our method of homeschooling. We thought we'd post it here, too!

Summary

We have homeschooled for about 19 years. We began almost entirely out of academic reasons, but gradually have come to recognize that the Bible has a lot to say about how to train children.

We started off with a desire to have a biblical foundation for our teaching, and used a unit study approach which taught academics loosely related to selected Bible verses. As we parents began to dig in more to the Bible, we began shifting to a biblical focus (rather than just foundation) for our teaching and recognized our vital responsibility to disciple our children.

Because serving the Lord requires more than just reading the Bible all the day long, we seek to use real life as an opportunity for discipling our children and teaching character and skills which we anticipate will prepare our children to serve the Lord Jesus Christ.

Another thing which has helped us in our pursuit has been to skip many popular children’s and youth activities, making our time more available for opportunities that keep our family doing things together. We tend to function as a 30-legged entity much of the time.

We believe the strengths of this approach are:

1. We have a lasting, strong reason to continue homeschooling. Our goals are not academic but eternal (that is, aiming our children to value the eternal things rather than temporal). When things are hectic or depressing, we know that it is not a sign to quit, but merely a reality of the spiritual pursuit and battle we are in.
2. Real life is not an interruption to teaching our children. Broken doorknobs, toilets and vehicles are real-life events our children will deal with as long as they live. We hope to deal with them both practically and through employing James 1 and other relevant scriptures!
3. There is simplicity because we have a tangible goal for our children. It is not impressing the grandparents, college entry requirements, or acquiring marketable skills, but aiming our children to serve the Lord Jesus Christ.
4. Aside from the cost of new toilets, educational expenses are pretty low and usually one-time purchases (except for well-worn books). Impulse buying at conferences is rare. In fact, we seldom shop for new homeschool-specific resources (though we frequently add to our family library).
5. We are preparing our children for the likelihood of them having their own families someday. The family today is in trouble. Much of this is because parents and children learn to be accustomed to self-seeking pursuits, which soon crowd out opportunities for relationships. Our weekly schedule includes mostly things we do together.

The biggest challenges to this approach are:

1. The constant pull, when dealing with broken things, messes to clean up, etc, towards expedience rather than seeing the valuable learning opportunities.
2. The ongoing struggle with our flesh as parents in becoming that which we wish for our children to become: more like the Lord Jesus Christ.

A little more explanation

In Matthew chapter 6, Jesus tells us that we shouldn’t worry about the basic necessities of life, such as food and clothing. He reminds us how the Father clothes the plants and how He feeds the birds and how He cares much more for us than for them.

He concludes that section with this: “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” Matt. 6:33

Our culture doesn’t really encourage us to live that way and it is a constant struggle for us adults. We are endeavoring to help our children get started with this mindset, hoping that it will make it easier for them as adults to continue to seek first God’s kingdom and righteousness.

To do this, we have tried to make the study of God’s word the focus of our children’s education. It is the most important thing they can learn, so it is the thing they spend most of their study time on. We just figured that it makes sense to spend the most time on what is most important.

We use the Bible as a tool for teaching our younger children to read. We have them copy Bible verses to learn to write. Then when they are able, we start them on copying the Bible into notebooks. Besides being a great way to work on writing and penmanship skills, it is also an excellent method of learning the Scriptures. It is also the method that the Lord prescribed for the kings of Israel. In Deuteronomy 17: 18-19, where God is giving instructions for the time when Israel one day has a king, we read: “And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites: And it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life: that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them.”

When helping our children gain other knowledge and skills, we try to do all of it in the context and for the purpose of serving the Lord by serving others.

For example, we teach writing and language arts primarily by having our children write letters to family and friends. We emphasize that the goal of their writing is to be an encouragement and to convey information. Because of this, they should do their best at writing for the benefit of the person to which they are writing.

We encourage our children to learn practical skills that will help them to serve and we place more emphasis on these skills than on academics. In our training plan, academics have their place, but only as building blocks to enable them to better study God’s word and to equip them to put it into practice by serving others.

In acquiring general knowledge outside the Bible, we feel that we must train our children to acquire a taste for that which is beneficial for us to know. That is, for the most part, if learning a thing is of little benefit to us (as parents), it usually isn’t of much benefit to them. Exceptions would be in the area of skills: fixing the bus or learning Swahili. We feel it is a strength to the family for different of us to have different skills and areas of expertise. However, in areas of history, science, math, etc, we are aiming our children for competence in the things which we feel they will most need, realizing that there is no cut-off date for acquiring knowledge. These areas we try to pursue as a family through our family library of books and videos and the everyday occurrences that demonstrate the need or benefit for such knowledge.

To make this a teeny bit more concrete, consider the issue of testing. Many homeschoolers object to standardized testing because “Whoever determines what is on the test also determines what is taught.” Many homeschoolers reject non-mandated standardized tests for this very reason.

So our thinking is that as Christian parents, we have a standard by which to judge what should be taught to our children. We feel our goal as Christian parents is to diligently search the Scriptures and see what God requires. In our progress so far, we see it is drastically different from that of the world’s standards. Why is that?

We believe that the reason is that the world rejects, even mocks, the Lord Jesus’ instruction in Matthew 6:33. The world says, “If you don’t perform well academically, what will you eat? How will you be clothed?” The Lord has an answer to that:

“But seek ye first the kingdom of God,

and his righteousness;

and all these things

shall be added unto you.”

A thousand words...

We are back from the ICHE conference, near Chicago, and the photos are being picked for another post. But the best part is not the sights, but the SOUNDS! We were so blessed to hear what the Lord is doing in so many families!

Here are some examples from Wisconsin and Illinois...

A mom of a 4 year old girl said the Bible was her daughter's favorite book and was looking for more ways to expose her to it (we suggested Bible on CD).

A dad of 6 children who teaches his children the Bible every night!

Parents of two little ones who have taken in two neglected toddlers, for a total of four children under age four. The father introduces himself to vendors by saying, "I'm a born-again Christian. I have four children and I want to train them in the ways of the Lord. What do you have to offer me?"

A grandma and grandpa in their 50's who have adopted 4 children from a Third World country and are teaching them at home, training them up in the way they should go, faithful amidst challenges and sparse encouragment.

A family that has homeschooled for many years, and had been copying the Bible for quite some time, because they had seen Deuteronomy 17:18 years ago!

A single Amish young man who had been invited to the conference by a close friend who had been homeschooled. He seemed very thoughtful about the things he had seen at the conference, and recognized that the Bible had much to say about how to raise children, even though homeschooling is not an Amish way.

And a dad who, upon seeing our display about copying the Bible, told Dave, "Sometimes you see something, and it hits you, and you know, 'This is true.' "

Well, that was only about 300 words. But you get the picture.

A verse a day!!

Our verse a day is going pretty well here in 2011, praise the Lord.

Our introduction to this idea came several years ago, while having friends over to visit at our house in Texas. Each morning, the families all gathered for songs and then working on their verse for the day. We found it so simple. One thing we really liked was the sense of routine and order it gave to the beginning of the day!

Now, years ago, we would think memorizing a Bible verse per day would be a bit to difficult and ambitious to keep up with, but we have found it quite doable, with the Lord's help. The key is not flannelgraph or mnemonic devices or index cards. Its just simple repetition and review!

Our habit has been to gather everyone in the morning before breakfast for devotions. Currently we are in our den, which is a huge room, but we used to meet around our kitchen table in our little house in the woods. We had a large white board in our old house, but ironically, there is barely any wall space for such a thing in our new huge den, so we use an easel.

Dave selects a passage for us to work on. We are just starting Galatians 6, but just finished the first part of Matthew 8.

The way it works is that every morning, after having some song time, Dave pulls out his Bible and reads the passage to us. At first, he just reads phrase by phrase, and then we echo it back, kind of like a responsive reading, except we are just repeating.

After day one, we have memorized the first verse, so on day 2, we all RECITE verse one together, and then continue the rest of the passage echoing Dave phrase by phrase. Because we RECITE together, those who have it down solid, or have PARTS of it down solid give a leg-up to the rest of us who may be a little slow.

After the reciting part, one of the big kids writes the day's verse on a whiteboard in our den where we gather. We discuss the verse's meaning, find related verses elsewhere, define words, etc. If applicable, we then make an illustration of the verse, too.



The little boys get our notebooks and pens out, and we write the verse on a new page of our book.


(We get out the notebooks after the verse recitation and discussion so as not to be a distraction!)


The little ones who cannot read or write have a notebook and we can make the words in dots for them to trace.


Despite their lack of reading, our little guys easily NAIL the entire passage, even the two year old! They can recite the passage with just a hint word here or there; sometimes they don't even need that and we hear them saying it in the shopping cart! Its not because we give them vitamins or because they are super-smart, either. Children are wired for memorization and, boy, do we wish we had taken advantage of this fact when our oldest were still very young!

[It is sad that some homeschool experts recommend that parents have their young children memorize all kinds of Latin and facts and figures, but then only recommend a Bible story book for teaching Bible.]

Certainly, their understanding may be limited, though not as much as you might think, but we are convinced there is great value in their participation at this early age. Because of the fruit we have seen, our older kids are all fairly determined to begin Bible reading with their babies from their earliest days!

So everyone does their best at writing our their verse for the day....especially if its going to be photographed!





After discussion and having everyone write the verse in their notebook, we go around in a circle and take turns reciting this. Even this helps, because the faster memorizers recite first, and so I can hear the verse over and over before its my turn to try it. Ooops.

As I said, the key is repetition and review. We have stacked up quite a few passages since we started this method and need to review them, so we will usually recite a past passage together before working on the new verse a day passage.

We have found that even parents with dwindling brain cells can make amazing progresss. We don't do any intentional review at other times of the day, but just work on this in the morning.

Also, it is such a blessing, a major blessing, to start the day together with the LORD, singing and getting into the Word and praying together.


When we first started, we were somewhat hit and miss with our consistency. But now it is very much a part of each day. The children know what we are doing first thing! We wish we had started this tradition from the very beginning, but thank the Lord for these 6 or so years of taking a verse a day!

We hope this will encourage you to consider this wonderful, simple way of starting your day with the Lord!

For more information, please read How to teach your child a Verse A Day.

Precious moments

Here is Joshie laying on Daddy's chest during our evening Bible time. We read about Noah, and Joshie usually listens attentively, especially if we quietly narrate into his ear as we listen. Of course, he doesn't grasp all of what we can, but he is making progress. It is amazing what little children can retain and we just wish we would have realized this sooner! One of our older kids has resolved that if they have a child someday, they will read to him or her the Bible daily, from their first day!

Reading comprehension

Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them,
I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:
And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house;
and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.
And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not,
shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:
And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house;
and it fell:
and great was the fall of it.
Matthew 7:24-27

As we continue to work with Sammy, we keep seeing amazing benefits from teaching children to read using the Bible.

Reading comprehension means that you are trying to teach the child to get information from what they are reading, that is, to understand it. In the schools, this is often tested by asking children multiple choice or fill in the blank questions. (I remember being pretty good at fill in the blank tests, because I would just scan the subject passage for words with over 3 syllables, and that was often the one.)

Everyone agrees it is pointless to labor over sounding out the words without knowing what you are reading. However, if we are just trying to follow the Bible's instruction to parents in teaching our children God's Word, it's all in the bag. We are coming to think its not even a separate step: if we are trying to follow the Bible's instructions to parents...we are teaching the WORDS and their application, reading for meaning, reading for living. Perhaps the learning is in increments, but its simultaneous, at least it seems that way.

Schools need to separate everything into TESTABLE steps. That is one of many limitations of schools, and its not because its the best way to teach a child a thing, but for the convenience of the teachers. Parents who teach their children at home are not so limited in how we teach. If we are teaching our children the word of God, we are steering towards a known point on the horizon. Is the goal literacy? No, that would fall short of the Bible's instruction. There are plenty of literate people who are lost. We have to be so careful to seek first the kingdom of God, not literacy, and not even literacy as a tool to seek the kingdom of God. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, Jesus said, and all these things (including literacy) will be added unto you.

We are really seeing the more we try to make this our focus, it really works.

We are working on the book of Job, and Sammy is doing pretty well on most of the words. In the first chapter so far, most of the words he is reading without much effort. I noted these words which he either didn't already know, or needed extra help sounding out, so we can put them in his notebook:

upright - we have an " - ight " page in his notebook, to which we added this word
eschewed - we had to sound this out and define it, old word
perfect - in sounding it out, he used the soft c sound
thousand - define
hundred - use this in thousand
yoke of oxen - I am thinking a yoke's worth is two oxen...
household - defining this word
nought - adding this to the " - ought " page in his notebook, and defining this word.

After reading through verse 3, where it says Job was the greatest of the men of the east, we stopped and looked at all the stuff we know about Job so far, what made him great? He picked out things we had read.

Now he is working on a two page spread in his notebook, where he is making pictures and copying phrases about Job and all his stuff from the first few verses of Job.


As he was reading and doing his spread, he commented that the word daughters has the "aught" sound, which we have a page for, so we are adding that. In my mind, back when we made that page, I didn't think he'd memorize it, but he does seem to remember that letter combination.

I have noticed my tendency to want to present certain things as a classroom teacher would. But many times, before I have it all laid out, Sammy already has the concept. I don't think its because he is precocious. Rather, outside the artificial confines of a classroom, things are so connected, and in a real context. It's kind of a habit we have to form: to teach children as a parent rather than as if we are a classroom teacher. Parents came first, and teachers are often just imitations for parents.

As parents, we pray our children will build their lives on a rock: hearing and doing the Word of God!

Hooked on scripture!

 Zak helped us set up video conferencing with Daddy, sent to the projector, so we could have our evening Bible time with him!  It is, second to him being here, absolutely wonderful!

In the last few months, Sammy has jumped into the shallow end of the pool of literacy. He is reading and writing. Very fun! What makes it the most fun for us is that his reading instruction has been almost exclusively from the Bible!

Why does this matter?  Do we think this is the only approved way to teach a child to read?  

For many years, we have used a certain homeschool phonics program, for many of our children. They would get about half way through, and then it would click, and we'd discard it, and they'd go on with reading and writing.  However, as we have made changes in our family through the years, we have noticed how God seems to have laid out an excellent reading instruction program in Deuteronomy 6:4-9...

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD:
 And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
 And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:
 And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
 And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.
 And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.



We have tried to dedicate the first and last hours of each day to family devotions, and so even the pre-readers are present and absorbing Scriptures.  While the oldest of us don't memorize as easily, the youngest ones are like sponges.  They look like they are zoning, but later in the day, at the strangest of times, they will start reciting the verses we are working on!

Not with total understanding, no, that comes slower.  But it does come, and it has to start somewhere, and it seems like it starts with God's Word!  Just like that scripture says, we have to talk about it all the day long.  It seems I am always hearing friends tell me how surprised they are that their young children can grasp so much Bible!  It's not what we parents are told to expect. 

Many phonics programs are designed with the assumption that children aren't being immersed in the Bible.  For example, commercials tell us, "Give your child delicious Ovaltine, which is balanced with all the nutrition and vitamins they need,  if you can't get them to eat a healthy diet."   Reading programs just seem designed for children who aren't normally exposed to reading, let alone, the Bible.  Rather, the assumption is that in order to appeal to a child (who will like what they are brought up to like!!!) you have to make everything Disney or whatever.  This is called:  "the child's level."  And you hear things like, "...will introduce your child to the world of literature..." or something to that effect.

It's almost like if you have stairs in your home.  When your baby is young, you obviously carry them up and down the stairs.  As they crawl, you supervise them and keep them off the stairs.  As they begin to walk, you stay with them, and eventually they get to the point where they can use the stairs safely on their own.  But they have been observing and absorbing the whole while, real stairs.

You don't have to create a rubber, primary-colored replica of child-scale stairs, and give them 5 minute daily lessons on using the stairs, or demonstrate using rainbow colored animals. 

Getting back to that question, which I kind of anticipated in my paranoid way, "Do you think teaching reading with the Bible is the only approved way to do it?"  It seems like God has the verses in Deutronomy wired in such a way that if you try to follow them, your child will learn to read.  Like the hokey example about rubber, primary-colored stairs, by following God's direction to dilligently teach our children the Bible by talking about it all the day long, you are already teaching reading.  It's more than phonics.

In fact, in one book, I remember the author talking about how you teach the child all these phonics sounds, using the letter dice and the cue cards and the puppets on popsicle sticks,  but they still may not get it until one day, click, they are decoding. Its so funny how, up until that time, you introduce the letter sounds in some scientificly prescribed order, but that's not enough, there has to be this spontaneous click, and then they get it.  

Well, we are now wondering  if that click isn't helped along by having packed away lots of scripture in their hearts and minds, and starting them on reading the Book they are most familiar with.

We kind of observed this with our middle girls, that they required much less phonics instruction.  They were hearing God's Word daily, plus they were very handy with hymnals.  That exposed them to all kinds of nutty English words which followed no regular rules.  Since they MEMORIZED the songs, they could figure out the letter sounds.  They followed verse by verse, and eventually started selecting songs they didn't know, and would sing along, out of tune, since they could READ the words!

As Sammy once said, "Is the P silent?  Because its supposed to say 'salm'."

When I used to hear people say, "Historically, people taught their children to read with the Bible," I found that hard to comprehend.  I was thinking "Hooked on Phonics."  Maybe there was more to it than that.  If a child is memorizing the Bible before they ever see a page, you can show them a passage they know, and they have a head start.  In his reading, Sammy generally wants to figure out a word.  Some times, a child says a word wrong, and you correct them, but they just skip over it and don't even repeat your correction.  But Sammy knows the Bible means something, so he doesn't normally do that.  Currently, we are finishing up memorizing John 3, so many of the words are fresh in his mind. 

But what about the King James English?  We happen to use the King James Bible.  You know, it has been no big deal, because they can differentiate between our spoken English and what they are reading.  They have enough exposure to modern English, that they are actually translating anything archaic to what it means...because of course, we explain it to them.  (Archaic just means an old word, not a meaningless word.)  Of course, there are days when we conduct all our conversation in our mock Old English, but they realize we don't normally talk that way.

Well, this is, of course, just our experience.  But it is so wonderful to hear Sammy wanting to read John chapter 3 twice in a row, with Gideon listening and saying "The Bible is the best book of all.  It's the only thing I like!" which may not always be true, but it sure is a neat aspiration!   Its not a video curriculum or an incentive program that did that...it's just hearing and reading the Bible and believing it. 

I guess this is such an exciting thing for me because it just demonstrates that God has a plan for families, and if we seek HIM first and HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS (by transforming our minds in HIS WORD), then all these things (reading) will be added unto us. 


Here are some of the things we have been doing with Sammy, and have done with most of the children.

He has his Bible in a case, and a composition book.  In the book, we write something down to remember.  Sometimes the goal is learning some kind of rule, like apostrophes (possessive vs plural), sometimes it is similar words (spelling or meaning), one time we did forming irregular plurals (which is when he told me, "You can only have ONE WIFE!"), sometimes its compass points, whatever.   We compare or classify words, or find other words spelled similarly. 

In the beginning, I did the writing.  Now he copies off a small white board, or I dictate.  Lately I have had him sound out words. 

Some of these things you don't have to teach, because the child just figures it out.  Since we are not using a "child's Bible", Sammy has to figure out that titles are not Bible verses, footnotes are not Bible verses, etc.  He caught on right away.

He is also doing letter writing, which is largely copying a draft we write for him.  He is already trying to write his own sentences.   Letter writing has been the biggest tool we have used in teaching writing, because all aspects have to be working together.

So, we are getting ready to start him doing Bible copy in Genesis.  He works hard on his handwriting, and is still learning all the letters (how to make them by the book -- we use italic basic).  We've noticed that our children generally do very well with penmanship if their attitudes are right.  We've never had messy penmanship without an attitude problem or a distraction problem.

From our earliest days of homeschooling, Dave and I felt that if it was really the Lord's plan for families, it wouldn't be dependent on man-made programs and such.  It would be a tool for us to teach and train our children in the way they should go.  We have had (and continue) to rethink a lot of our assumptions about what we are trying to accomplish and why and how.  God continues to show us how little we know. One of the most thought-provoking message we have heard, and continue enjoy listening to, is "Homeschooling versus Discipleship" by Jonathan Lindvall.

One for you and one for me

Sammy is plodding along in his reading. We encourage him to sound out words he finds, sometimes with funny results.

We were reading the account of Noah last week, and I could tell Sammy's comprehension is there, as before he finished reading Genesis 7:23, which includes "and Noah only remained alive..." he paused and said, "No, the rest of the people in the ark were alive too." I told him to continue, and it read, "and they that were with him in the ark."

In chapter 7, the text reads, "...and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons..." So we discussed how some words with a f change when you make them plural. We got out his little composition notebook and went to the white board, and I made a little table for him to copy in his book. Singular words with f and then their plurals. We used the words wife, knife, and life.

I explained, "If you have one wife, its spelled with an f, but if you have several wives, its spelled with a v."

With the sense of great injustice, like someone missing out on their brownie after supper, Sammy loudly corrected:

"You can only have ONE wife."

A discovery - teaching reading with the Bible!

We had such a blessed time at the Wisconsin CHEA homeschool conference last weekend! Meeting and talking with so many parents, who are really seeking the Lord's direction for their families, was exhilarating and encouraging. We had some long-longed-for fellowship with some of our good friends, too! Several Klein family members volunteered to do sessions, so we had to do some strategic planning, but the Lord helped us to keep track of everyone. I know we'll post pictures later...

Years ago, Joanna was saying all the letter sounds in the alphabet and when she got to d, she said, "I'm not allowed to say that one," much to the chagrin of Uncle Eddie. The d says "duh", and Joanna (a very compliant child) was allowed to say the sound, but not the expression, though it really comes to mind for the topic of this blog entry. Don't tell Uncle Eddie!

Teaching reading with the Bible, of course, is about as old as the Bible. But in the past year, we have pursued this more fully, and it has been a wonderful experience. Here is a little of our story thus far...

Yesterday, Sammy and I (Mommy) were on the lawn swing doing his Bible reading. Sammy is our 11th child, and for his reading, we have taken the final plunge in teaching reading from the Bible. I think he saw a couple of Bob Books (phonics readers) when we first started, but we disposed of them early on. Not phonics, just phonics readers.

Anyway, reading is much more than just learning letter sounds. Children are learning language from their earliest days, bit by bit. We have noticed more and more, as we have had more children, signs that they are understanding us earlier than we previously realized. For example, Joshie (number o-one-three, as we like to say) from before 8 months old UNDERSTOOD "no"! This may not be news to some alert parents, but for us, it was amazing. But more about that later, Lord willing.

Through the years, as the Lord has shown us the importance of intentionally teaching our children the Bible (especially, but not limited to, morning and evening devotions), we have noticed our younger children absorbing (memorizing) Bible verses. Hmmm. During our morning devotions, when we focus on memorizing together, the younger children, who do not always appear to participate, still learn and memorize. In fact, they can "lead" the family in calling out verses with Daddy (which the rest of us echo back, until we know it by heart). Many homeschoolers are familiar with this ability in young children, and use it for all kinds of information such as math facts, Latin conjugations, states and capitols, etc. But doesn't it seem like God had a higher purpose for this ability?

So, prior to reading lessons, our children are taking in a many Bible verses...just from hearing it read and recited.

In addition, when we start "school," we begin with Bible reading. We read and re-read familiar Bible stories (Jonah, Noah, creation, the birth of Jesus, the resurrection, etc.). It doesn't take long before these are largely memorized. No flash cards or flannelgraph, just reading (and discussing as needed). Even from age 3, Gideon was able to fill in the blanks while we were reading through the whole book of Jonah! We simply had no concept that this was possible or even desirable with our oldest children. We thought you were supposed to use children's "Bibles"!!

So, with Sammy, we simply started introducing letter sounds to simpler words or syllables. We kind of followed the pattern of most phonics programs: single consonants and short vowels. For sight words, we just picked out some words that followed no typical rule. By working on familiar stories, Sammy was familiar with what words would pop up, and learned to associate the letters (and their sound) with the words. It's really no different from using Spanish songs to help remember pronunciation (or conjugations).

With phonics readers, our children would ALWAYS look at the pictures and then make a total guess as to the sentence, with no regard for the words, letters, or even number of words on the page. I always had to cover the picture, or they would start guessing.

With the Bible, there are occasional guesses (for example, a word that also starts with the same letter). We chalk that up to laziness at the beginning. A reminder to "sound it out" gets him on track.

Starting with passages that Sammy already knows is helpful, because he can put together what the letters are actually are with the word. For example, Sammy asked "Is the P in Psalm silent? Because it's supposed to say 'salm'."

Sammy has a notebook in which we occasionally write down word families (should, could, would or might, sight, light). We used that daily in the beginning, and he sometimes would say, "I need to write that on my -ight list" or whatever.

I am greatly abbreviating all the adventures we've had with that, but now we have moved on to something he has not memorized: the gospel of Matthew. Starts with genealogies! They are great, because he can use all the phonics he's got, and how can you go wrong? I notice that when a new peculiarity emerges (Spanish is such a wonderful language!), I just mention that in this instance, the letter(s) say ____. And we go on. WHEN HE IS ALREADY FAMILIAR WITH A PASSAGE, this just gets programmed into his brain. Well, you know, it's just like learning the irregularities with spoken English -- it doesn't require a curriculum.

For writing, he is mostly doing copywork (for letters to people), but he is branching into shopping or packing lists, like the list he made for Sarah's 16th birthday. Making lists is such a fun thing. He loves to sound things out and write things, but still needs a good deal of help.

Some reasons why we are really enjoying teaching reading from the Bible:

1. It's a natural, because the child is familiar with it from their earliest days, uses it daily, has portions memorized, enjoys having his own copy, equates it with being BIG, and will need it all his life long.
2. Furthermore, because its natural and in use in the home, reading comprehension seems to be faster, because they know its SUPPOSED to mean something! In reading Matthew, Sammy asks questions that reveal he is not merely decoding words. It just seems to be the perfect book for reading -- no doubt!
3. There are no pictures to confuse.
4. It helps them to participate more in family Bible reading and church meetings.
5. It requires no accessories to purchase and so is very PORTABLE! Today, we will work at the laundromat!
6. It doesn't drop children off at a certain "grade level".
7. It has real meaning -- this is not typical of phonics readers.
8. It is so interesting! A true story, starting with the beginning of the whole world!
9. It's the most important book ever written. We really love "bringing the little children to Jesus" in this way.

Well, there are some observations from where we are so far. We are very thankful for what the Lord is teaching us through all our children.

The law of the LORD is perfect!

Our family went verse by verse through Psalm 119 for over a year, with the goal of memorizing it. We do well when we recite it all together, helping each other. We don't consider it a done deal; we try to regularly review it (portions of it). It's the biggest "chapter" in the Bible!

The little boys are probably the ones with most of it best memorized. Little children memorize so easily. We think its not a coincidence!

Today, for our school time with the little boys, we worked through reviewing it. Noah led the charge by reading it, and me and the mostly illiterate (Sammy and Gideon) try to say it by memory along with him.


The next part is a little tricky for me to introduce. We started doing some things to better understand Psalm 119. That is our primary goal in teaching the children, understanding God's Word.

Reading through this Psalm, you notice the repetition of various synonyms for "law." So it seemed natural to talk about this, and why....

Why do we keep reading different words that are similar to law?

Just this morning, when it was 5 below zero, Bekah was out feeding the ducks. She accidentally dumped a bucket of water on our front steps. It turned to smooth ice. It was very treacherous, because if someone dashed out to take out the trash -- ouch! So I immediately assembled everyone and told them:

There's ice on the steps. It's dangerous. You have to be careful. It's slippery. The ice will not melt in this cold. If you step on the ice, you will slip and fall. Don't forget about the ice on the steps!

That was my attempt to get everyone to pay attention, because if just one person forgets, they will probably get badly hurt.

Well, it looks like the LORD was doing the same thing in Psalm 119: remember the law or you will be in trouble!

We had already started talking about synonyms last time and began making a list of the ones we found (don't know if you should list law on a list of synonyms for law, but oh well!).



After going through the first three sections of Psalm 119, we found six words similar to law ("statutes" is not visible).

As we hunted, Noah would occasionally find words like "declare" or "rejoice" and ask if they were synonyms. So we discussed the difference between action words and nouns (specifically, synonyms for law, which is a noun). We don't test the kids for things like this, but since it is helpful to know about words like this, that is why we looked at it. (Learning the definition of the word synonym is not a big deal to us, and isn't helpful in understanding what a synonym is, but we did that too.)

Then I remembered some math sheets we had, which were used for a math activity. In the activity, you interview family members to see what their favorite color, food, etc is. The child picks a color for each choice, and counts up the colored cubes representing the votes of the family members. Then they graph the results. So I dug the sheets out and modified them to accommodate our needs.

We wrote each synonym under the baseline, assigned each a different color.


Noah and Sammy transferred the colors to each sheet.


Then, as Noah read through Psalm 119, he would pause whenever he came to one of the synonyms (which we already had listed). Sammy and Giddy would take turns identifying the word on the sheet (so they could figure out which color cube to get) and then selecting the cube and putting it in a pile.


It worked out really well, as Giddy practiced his colors, and Sammy practiced identifying the words (mostly by the first letter sounds, which happened to all be unique). They had to wait for turns and they all listened attentively, because they knew what we were looking for.

What is interesting is that it gave me another opportunity to observe Sammy's skills in letter recognition and letter sounds and things like that. He is really learning. It really seems like scripture memory adds such a important dynamic to learning to read. Its hard to explain. He is honestly sounding out the words. He is not just mindlessly saying words that start with the same letter, as our older kids would do when we used regular phonics programs. Sammy knows what the word is supposed to be, so he works with the letters there to make it right.

For example, he asked "Is the p silent in Psalm? Because its supposed to say salm"

This explains what we observed with some of our middle girls. They learned about 4 letter sounds, and then it just seemed, bang! they were reading. Well, what was also happening was they were following along in in the Bible and in hymnals (which we use almost daily at home). Duh!

So we amassed a certain number of colored cubes. Then came the fun task of forming them into various sized rods. Then, they began to work on coloring in the appropriate number of squares in their appropriate columns...




The title of the graph is: Synonyms for "law" in Psalm 119:1-24 and the stats are:

law 2
commandments 4
testimonies 4
judgments 3
precepts 2
word 2
statutes 5