Hi!

I'm spending some time thinking over our next school year and wondering what you all would recommend to do for daily family devotions before school each morning and how much time would you recommend taking for these devo's? Tell me what's worked and not worked for your families.

I have 1 UG and 3 LGs.

I'm looking for LOTS of ideas so please throw in yours!

We've done lots of different things over the years.

When the kids were really little, we would often read a story or two out of their children's Bible, and we would spend a few moments singing worship songs with a CD.

One year I used You Can Change the World to teach the kids about Unreached People Groups, and we spent time praying for them. However, this is an old book. The book I would recommend for this now is Window on the World. It has great photos in it, too! Marcia recommends this for use on the second page of the reading assignments in some of the week plans.

Last year (before I knew about TOG!), my younger children used Greenleaf Press's Old Testament guide, and we read through the Old Testament together. If you are doing TOG Year 1, you could probably incorporate a lot of the Bible reading into your devotional time.

This year, though, I plan to spend our time together in memorizing Scripture. We had a good start a couple of years back, but I'm ashamed to admit that I let it slide. I like to have the kids memorize large sections of Scripture at a time, because I think, in general, they are more helpful then isolated verses. In the past, we've memorized Psalm 23, The Lord's Prayer, 1 Corinthians 13, and Ephesians 6:10-18.

As my children are getting older, I'm trying to encourage them, especially as they each become fluent readers, to spend time in the Word themselves daily. Having time to do this each morning when EVERYONE was doing it at the same time seemed to make it more likely to get done.

So my plan for this year is to spend maybe 5-7 minutes memorizing, and then have the readers spend time alone in the Word. I'll read from the children's Bible to the nonreaders.

I'm assuming you are talking about mom and the kids. Our devotional time with dad is in the evening and is quite different. I can elaborate on that if anyone is interested.

Michelle

I have been using Susan Hunt's books for our morning devotions. Last year we used Discovering Jesus in Genesis, this year we will move on to Exodus. We used her ABC and her catechism ones when the boys were smaller- ABC is good for age 4-5, catechism K-2nd, Genesis/Exodus 1st-4th.

For our family devotions, we have been using the Here In Is Love series available from Ted Tripp's Shepherd Press. It includes discussion questions and activities.

Hi Valerie,
We have also been reading Here in is Love by Nancy Ganz for the past few weeks and have really enjoyed it (I have two UG aged children and on LG).
However, I would highly recommend a devotional book that I have read through to my children 2 times now and we all enjoy it--it is called Stories to Share by Patricia St. John. I recently bought another devotional book by her as well called A Young Person's Guide to Knowing God but, much to my dismay, it is the same as Stories to Share, just with a different title. This little book clearly presents the gospel message using stories that sometimes bring tears to my eyes as I read them to my children, always with a the Scripture verses/chapters to read as well and discuss, and then my children beg for more because they love the stories so much. I can't tell you how many times we have discussed and benefited from her stories and analogies in our daily lives as my children and I struggle with certain issues--they are a powerful tool as we attempt to live the life that God calls us to. I can't recommend it enough, and your children are the perfect age for it too!
Unfortunately, I don't think this book is in print now, but I was able to find both Stories to Share and A Young Person's Guide to Knowing God in the Amazon Marketplace.
One other thing to mention is that all of Patricia St. John's books are wonderful (Star of Light, Rainbow Garden etc...) and they all present the gospel message in a way that children understand. I just read her autobiography and it was wonderful too, I could see why I like all of her children's books so much-she had such a heart for serving the Lord.
One other devotional book that we enjoyed when our children were just a bit younger was Hymns for a Kid's Heart by Wolgemuth and Tada. We started singing the hymns during our morning devotions time and never stopped, we have found this a great way to start off the day!
One more thing that I wanted to mention, along the lines of Scripture memory that Michelle said they do, is the Fighter Verse book that Desiring God puts out. We have found Scripture memory to be very meaningful and this little book has been a great tool for us that we also work on during our morning devotions. I always struggled to be consistent and find just the right chapters and this little binder has been such a blessing! It comes in a little binder with 3x5 cards that have 2-4 verses that are truly "Fighter Verses" for strengthening our walk with the Lord. I think it will take us about 2-3 years to get through the whole little book-which has little tabs for reviewing for a week and such-but we will have such a wonderful store of Scripture when we are done. I would recommend it for anyone like me who has a hard time being consistent in this area! Sorry to make this so long, but I pray it has been helpful!
Blessings,
Mary

I would recommend as soon as you think they are ready to read the Bible-just the pure ,Spirit- inspired Word of God and don't underestimate what your little ones can grasp. The best thing I've ever done for our Bible time has been to follow my husband's advice to read John. I read it first -tried to stay a chapter ahead-, studied on my own, and then came up with questions that I wrote on the board for them to answer. After breakfast they read the section on their own, then we pray together asking the HOly Spirit for wisdom, insight,and understanding and then we all take turns reading aloud(faith comes by hearing!) Then we discuss the answers they wrote. This has held me accountable to my own time with the Lord because if I don't prepare, they don't have questions to ponder and our time in the Word is not as productive. I need that accountability. 1John says we have the anointing and we don't need others to teach us because the HOly Spirit HImself is our teacher. I'm at a point in my life where I want to let the Word of God -not someone else's commentaries-be my teacher. Not to say there's no place for hearing others insights but it is a good thing to read the Bible. We also use Hyms for Kids and are trying to memorize 2 a month, and I also started reading together confessions that I get from our church bulletin. Just a family need to realize the depth of our sin and thus the depths of God's great love for us in sending us a Savior. Press on- even if they seem bored-it's not about their happiness but their holiness!!

Hi,
I'm late joining the conversation, I know, but you can read about our evening family liturgy at
http://homeschoolblogger.com/karendv/401843

We also use Starr Meade's Training Hearts, Teaching Minds in the morning. It's a devotional structured around the Westminster Shorter Catechism, and both of my kids have responded better to this than anything else we've done, including the Herein Is Love series (which we found to be okay but not great).

KarenDV

Read the Bible. OT, especially Genesis. The Proverbs are EXCELLENT and short enough to keep everyone's attention, and have obvious life-application. Singing together, scripture memory verses (like picking out of a verse box) and plenty of discussion time adds to the individualization of time in the Word.

We find the NIV Bible to be easy to understand and better than paraphrased children's bible (IMHO),even for very young children.

God Bless you and your time together with the Lord.
/Kristen

Coming in VERY late in this conversation. I have been hschooling for 15 years and we have gone through many different ways to have devotions. The best thing we ever did was to buy the two volume set of Balancing the Sword. It takes you through the Bible, and provides questions for the children to answer. This is what our family does. I read the selected chapters for the day, then I ask the questions of the children and then I write in the book the answers to the questions from what we've just read. No prep on my part and we are reading directly from the Bible with no programs that you have to prepare. Then we work on our AWANA verses for the week and end with memorizing scripture. We use Thy Word Creations to memorize chapters from the Bible. So far, we've memorized Gen. 1 - 2:3, Isaiah 53, The Ten Commandments, Psalm 91, The Temptations of Jesus, and we are working on the book of Romans, chapters 5, 6 and 7. We also memorize short scripture verses to songs from the Harrow Family or misc. scripture verses to songs that I have hanging around the house.
This works well for us and it's the best thing we've ever done to get the word of God in my children and myself. Balancing the Sword has a bible reading plan that comes with the books and you decided how long you want to take to read through the bible and it will print out a reading guide for you. They recommend a bible reading partner to keep you accountable, and I do have one. We make sure we stay on track. I know it doesn't sound like our family devotions are glamorous, but it works for us. We've also been known to sing from our hymnals if we have time. We end our time together with prayer. Sounds like a lot, but it's not too long and not too short...we are learning directly from the bible. We decided to take two years to read through the bible along with answering the questions in Balancing the Sword, and we've learned so much. I will continue to reuse the books and go through the bible again and again. If I were to stay with taking 2 years to read through the bible and answer the questions in BTS, then when my youngest child graduates from school, she will have gone through the bible 5 times!! And that is word for word reading every book of the bible. Anyways, that is what we have been using and will continue to use for our main devotional study.

Replying to your very late response "notvmom" We bought BTS this year and I love it. No doctrine, just questions on the Word. And tons of great cross-references. We usually don't get into those, but it has helped us have a plan, and not get confused by doctrines of men that do not line up with what we believe.
~Christy