We were asked to speak recently on how to get the Bible into the hearts of our young children. Since we have four children ages eight & under, we have quite a few resources that we really love. We KNOW there are unlimited other resources that are amazing for teaching the Bible to your children. These are just a few that we have used & love.
Amazon is a super handy place to get most of these items. *The Amazon links are affiliate links, but I am only linking what we truly love & use. Click on the image to find it on Amazon.* I will try to make comments on each one so you know if it will work for your kids!
The Young Readers Bible is a great beginning storybook Bible for littles. We began using it when Hannah Kate was a baby. The stories are shorter & the illustrations are eye catching. (This book was recently-maybe in the last 3-4 years-republished with a new cover image. We wore the cover off of our first one because we loved it so much!)
Egermeier's Bible Story Book is great as the kids get a little older. We started using it maybe when Hannah Kate was 3-4 years old. The stories are more detailed & there are less pictures.
We got the Complete Illustrated Children's Bible for our "big kids" for Christmas last year. They are 8 & 6 years old. The pictures are BEAUTIFUL & the stories are only about two pages long each. I wish they were longer, but our kids LOVE the illustrations. We liked it so much that I immediately bought one for our niece. Micaiah (6 years old) wants to read the Bible so badly he has been keeping this one in his bed. *We have not read every story yet, so I don't know if there are issues with any of the stories being Biblically accurate. Generally, we either change the words as we read or make actual corrections with a pen if absolutely needed since we have readers in the house now!
We got The Rhyme Bible Storybook for our "little kids" for Christmas last year. The are 4 & 2 years old & they LOVE it. Of course, it rhymes! The stories are short & the pictures are pretty too. We love to read several stories at a time.
We have had The Jesus Storybook Bible for several years. It is not my favorite because I feel like it gets a little imaginative with some of the stories. I feel like I need to comment each time & tell the kids that we don't *really* know that it happened exactly that way. BUT, as you can tell from the title, it points to Jesus in each story. I do think that is pretty neat & a great thing for our kids (& us!) to learn as they learn to study the Bible. We also somehow got this book on Audible (free subscription turned into forgot to cancel! Oops! Micaiah LOVES listening to this.)
The Arch Books are favorites in our home. We probably have 20 or more, so I am not going to link each one! I have only found a VERY few that were not Biblically accurate. Of course, the birth/death of Jesus ones have some denominational teachings so we did not get those. As far as I know, we have all of these & they are good! If you have questions about specific titles, you are welcome to email me! These books all rhyme & are pretty well detailed. All of our kids, ages 8-2, love them!
Noah loves these so much that he just started jumping up & down telling me we already have these books when he saw them on the screen!
We also love to find books like these for our littles. I love this illustrator anyway, so this Jesus Loves Me is definitely a hit. We've used it as gifts for other babies & for our NICU bags that we do!
The Busy Bible is something that we LOVE to use with our littles especially at PTP! There are two editions of it. It is a fabric book with different interactive things that your little one can do that relate to a Bible story. We do not use books/toys during worship for our kids, but if you do, this would be a great one to use. I also used to do a Bible lesson with it for Hannah Kate when she was a baby.
Here are some pictures of a few of the pages.
Here is the other edition. (I will say that I have never bought these from Amazon. We always ordered from Christian Family Bookstore in Chattanooga-they also had a better price.) If these are out of the budget, you could always make one or have a grandma or lady from your congregation help you to make one! A friend & I did a similar book that we called Bible ABCs or something similar. We had an interactive thing on each page. It took forever, but all of our kids have loved it! (It was made on the computer/printed & laminated.)
The KidSing cards that the Colleys/West Huntsville have produced are a great resource for Bible time and it is FREE. Check them out
here. When ours were younger, I found clip art to go with the KidSing topics to help them memorize them.
Apologetics Press always has amazing resources for teaching our children the truth of God's Word, how it really came from Him, & amazing facts about His creation. I am not going to take the time to go into all of them, but we have loved the Creation Cards (babies/toddlers, but really our bigger kids would love reading the facts too!), AP readers, & various books! AP also has a FREE downloadable curriculum that you can use in Bible classes at your congregation or for your at home Bible lessons!
Kaio Publications is another favorite for family Bible time! They have an awesome set of object lesson devotionals. You can purchase them individually or your elders can purchase a license for the whole congregation. Our kids LOVE the Football the Piggy book!
We use & LOVE
Bible Study Guide for All Ages. We have used it in our Bible lesson we do during homeschool as well as Bible time. We tell you all about how we have used it
here.
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| Hannah Kate showing on of the Bible book summary cards that we love! |
We also have several CDs that we really love! Our favorites are Each
Little Dewdrop, Children's Bible Songs (BSGFAA-there are some with clapping that we skip) & Hannah's Hundred. You should be able to find any of these at a brotherhood bookstore.
Cindy Colley
has also written a great book that you can
use for a month of your family Bible time! It is a story book & then there are ideas on what to do with your kids.
When we were having trouble with our children getting along (imagine that!), we got the My Brother's Keeper book. We did the junior version, but they also have youth. You can check out the ages to determine which one you should get. I just got one book & they all shared it. When it gave them a chance to write in the book or draw a picture, I would have them take turns or divide the drawing area into sections. We also just completed the Because I Said So... study, so I expect everyone to be perfectly obeying like tomorrow! :) We have loved both of these books-there was some mention of children sinning, but I edited that out as we read it.
We also have this study on godly contentment that I plan to start with them soon!
We also want to share a new resource that is on Facebook. The Medwar family has started a page called "Family Bible Time." They go live on Tuesdays at 7:30pm EST & do a devotional/Bible time with their family for everyone to join in! They've only done two so far, but they will all be available for viewing on the page after they are live too. Below is what they have posted on their page:
We have been doing “Bible Time” with our family for a few years and have often commented that it would be great if somewhere we could find a collection of 5-10 minute devotional videos geared towards children to use as one of the resources for our Bible Time. We recently came across a Facebook post that shared the story of a school principal from Texas that goes live on Facebook once a week and reads a book to her students. We immediately thought, “she’s onto something!” After some thought, prayer, and asking our friends for advice, we are excited to invite you and your family to join us every Tuesday evening at 7:30pm EST for Family Bible Time. The devotional will be geared toward elementary aged kids and will last approximately 10 minutes. There will be nothing professional about these devotionals. We are a real family with real kids who act up from time to time. We are not attempting to show you a perfect family in any way. It’s quite the opposite! We want to invite you into our real life and learn the Bible together. We hope this will encourage you to start doing “Bible Time” with your own family on the other days of the week! It’s our goal to show you how simple, yet meaningful it can be and give you courage to keep going even if it seems no one is listening.
These videos can also be viewed after the live showing, so that you can be part of it regardless of bedtime or evening commitments. Please join us and invite your friends as well!
My sweet friend & sister in Christ, Vicky Yocum, spoke at the Richmond church of Christ Family Seminar about getting the Word into the hearts of middle & high school children. She graciously shared her favorite resources. You can find the Google Doc
HERE.
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I just also want to say that we must also be sure that OUR personal Bible study is happening in order for us to teach our children. Not only will we not have the knowledge we need to share with them, but they will see that we are not really meaning what we say if we are not students of God’s Word as well. We have two episodes on our podcast about that if you want some tips for your own personal Bible study.
We hope this helps you as you look for great Bible time resources!
The Busy Bible is something that we LOVE to use with our littles especially at PTP! There are two editions of it. It is a fabric book with different interactive things that your little one can do that relate to a Bible story. We do not use books/toys during worship for our kids, but if you do, this would be a great one to use. I also used to do a Bible lesson with it for Hannah Kate when she was a baby. 
Here is the other edition. (I will say that I have never bought these from Amazon. We always ordered from Christian Family Bookstore in Chattanooga-they also had a better price.) If these are out of the budget, you could always make one or have a grandma or lady from your congregation help you to make one! A friend & I did a similar book that we called Bible ABCs or something similar. We had an interactive thing on each page. It took forever, but all of our kids have loved it! (It was made on the computer/printed & laminated.)
