How to Create Your Own Homeschool Bible Curriculum
Need a homeschool bible curriculum that is easy to use with any age or a large family? Create your own curriculum by using these four components.
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I began homeschooling because I wanted to provide my children with a quality Christian education. I also wanted to make sure they were learning and retaining the material covered. Naturally, I was very careful about the curriculum I chose, especially the bible curriculum.
There are so many great curriculum companies that provide a quality bible program, but none of those truly fit the needs of my home. So, I set out to create a bible curriculum, or more of a “bible study protocol” that would fit the needs of our family.
Why use a whole family bible curriculum?
I wanted a bible curriculum we could use as a whole family in our homeschool because there are some amazing benefits to studying the bible as a family. Over the years, we have discovered that as we study together, our attitudes are better toward each other, we are more united in prayer, and we learn more by hearing each other’s perspective on the scriptures.
What are the elements of our family homeschool bible curriculum?
I knew I wanted our study of the bible to include several elements:
- Daily bible reading (reading through the entire bible)
- Family Discussion
- Scripture memory
- Family Prayer
- Missions study and prayer
Daily Bible Reading
What scriptures do you want to cover?
When choosing the your daily bible reading sections, first decide what you want to accomplish. Do you want to systematically work your way through the scriptures? Do you want to cover certain topics during your school year?
After you determine what scriptures you want to cover, break those up into daily, bit sized chunks based on the number of verses or chapters per day.
There are several daily bible reading plans available online to download if you do not want to create your own reading plan.
Family Bible Discussion
After reading your section of scripture, be sure to discuss the verses and their meanings. Use commentaries and other study aids to help you and your children understand and glean as much as possible from the scriptures you are reading. Below are some of my favorite study aids to use with my children.
How do I include scripture memory in my homeschool bible curriculum?
Scripture memory is and integral part of our homeschool bible study. Everyone in our home memorizes scriptures from our five year old daughter with special needs to our older teens, and even my husband and myself.
Of course the methods of memorizing and the expectations for numbers of verses to memorize are different for every person in our house, but the common expectation is that each person does his best.
How do I choose the verses to memorize?
My older children are bible quizzers. They are always working on memorizing the bank of bible verses for the current quizzing season. When we are not working on quizzing verses or for the youngest members of our family, I choose a verse or two that are key verses from our area of study to work on memorizing.
Missionary Studies
I choose the missionary we study based on our current geography focus. Once I choose the missionary, I purchase the YWAM book about that missionary and any other biographies I can find. We read a section of a book each day. This usually closes out our bible time and lets us flow directly into geography study as a family.
How do you incorporate preschool children in family bible time?
Bible is one of the subjects where even the preschoolers can be included with the older children. I ask them to sit at the table with us and listen quietly. I offer one of a few options to keep them quiet but on task:
- A bible coloring sheet
- Bible figures to play with that pertain to our bible lesson
- As them to work on a tracing and writing a letter that is significant in our story.
- Tally mark sheet for significant words in our lesson
- Missionary coloring page
- Narrate a simplified overview of the daily bible passage before and after reading
- Choose one focus scripture to memorize and make up hand motions
How do I include kindergarten and elementary aged children in our bible time?
Kindergarten and elementary aged children are old enough to be included in a group study of the bible in the homeschool or in the family in general. I like to read them the bible passage from the usual bible translation we use, but also from an age appropriate bible.
How do I create a homeschool bible curriculum lesson plan?
Lesson plans for your bible curriculum can be created weekly, monthly, per semester or even annually. You can even base your lesson plans on the current material you wish to cover. I have provided a free blank lesson plan sheet below.
I like to fill in the verses I want to cover first, and then add the additional information about verses to memorize, words to define and missionary biography pages.
