My ds7 LOVED his God and Me workbook for his Cub Scouts religious award, so I decided to look into Bible study for him and his older brother -- beyond the Bible reading and prayer we have been doing. I realized I want them to have a good grounding in the core Bible texts, Bible history, and finding their way around the Bible, as well as an overview in terms of God's action and our response, memory work, and some sense of the geographical context as well. My son really liked the personal and family activities in his workbook, as did the whole family, so I hoped for a little of that as well.

Last night I spent a lot of time looking for Bible study curricula for the boys, and wasn't entirely satisfied. This morning on a favorite homeschooling board, an entirely new to me option was suggested, and after some research I really liked what I saw. Bible Study Guide for All Ages is the big winner in my eyes!

The student work pages have Bible text study, map work, timeline work, and memory work. You study the entire Bible over four years if you do two lessons per week, and Old Testament and New Testament are included each year. All ages are synchronized. It's not expensive. The teacher book looks very good, and is for all levels that year. I like it!

Last night, before hearing about Bible Study Guide for All Ages, I looked at...

Explorer Bible Study. Nondenominational Protestant. I wasn't so excited as others on Favorite Homeschooling Board about this. The workbooks are very oriented toward fill in the blanks about the Bible text, with little or no application/exploration, or info on the context.

Voyages. LCMS (conservative Lutheran, Concordia Publishing). Seems interesting, but I didn't find any samples I could look at.

Witness. ELCA (nonconservative Lutheran, Augsburg Fortress). Primary level book seems okay, but the teacher guide is entirely Sunday-school oriented, I didn't like the older elementary level and, well, no thanks.

From Living the Good News, associated with the Episcopal Church, I found some good options to use alongside a Bible study.

- Share the Joy seems application oriented: "teaches the foundations of faith based on the word of God, lived in community and grounded in service to others." I like very much what I saw of the actual children's materials.

- My Episcopal Faith is a quick study of our church history, beliefs, structure, traditions, etc.

- Episcopal Children's Curriculum, though Sunday-school oriented, looks interesting as a whole package to use alongside a Bible study. I'm going to see if our church's children's formation director has copies left from some years ago when they used this.

A completely different aspect is children's spirituality and relationship with God. This looks wonderful:

- The Way of the Child from the United Methodist Church's Upper Room Ministries. "For children ages 6-11 years, The Way of the Child leads children into a deeper relationship with God, instills in children spiritual practices to form lifelong habits, encourages children to respond to God, and provides an experience of vital community." It seems to be based on helping children experience prayer and other spiritual practices that are more commonly considered the realm of adults.

So now I, too, have some options. I'm going to get Bible Study Guide for All Ages, and at least My Episcopal Faith, unless ECC looks really good. Probably also Share the Joy, and The Way of the Child...

My Sunday school kids really enjoy working on their cards! I know how to post photos to my Blogger blog but not here. Here's a link to my Creation cards post, complete with photos, over there.

I've been working bit by bit for the past three weeks on my Days of Creation card idea for my Sunday school kids. It's helped me become more creative with my own kids, which has been a great benefit.

Next week in my Godly Play class, I'll tell my group of four- and five-year-old kids the story of the Creation, using placards with very simple representations of the seven days of Creation. For several years I've wanted to help them make their own take-home set of Creation cards, but was lacking in ideas.

This year, as I learned more about paper art/crafts, including playing-card sized artist trading cards... and figured out that you can apply adhesive to an entire card or piece of paper... the lights started to go on upstairs, LOL! As I mentioned before, I've borrowed a Xyron 510 adhesive/cold-laminating machine and have been covering playing cards with heavy paper, on the front side; I ended up buying an adhesive cartridge for this project (I'm making some greeting cards, too). I've gotten a lot further with my Creation cards project now!

I'm making six or eight sets of Creation card backgrounds that the kids can finish and take home. We have a free art response time and they have many choices available. If this turns out to be popular, I'll make another six or eight sets for the rest of the kids. I'd love it if they could complete their set in class on the day they choose it; that will probably require that I do more setup than I initially thought (die cuts/cut outs instead of their own cutting; stamping ahead rather than having them do stamps). I really want this project to be more than just coloring for the kids, so there's glueing, coloring, maybe stamping, probably using cut-outs from card stock, and maybe some animal stickers.

The cards so far: (please forgive me for errors; I'm doing the text here from memory!)

1. And there was light, and God separated the light from the darkness. A plain white card with half covered with black paper. The kids can color the 'light' half, if they like, with bright colors of markers or crayons. The story cards we'll use have yellow, not white, but my physics training has me balking at that. Pure light is all colors, and is white!

2. God made the firmament to separate the waters below from the waters above. A plain blue card. The kids can glue half-inch strips of paper to divide the card into two areas.

3. God made the dry land and green, growing things. A card covered with brown, textured-look paper. The kids can draw trees, flowers, whatever plants they want; they could cut a strip of green paper into fringe to glue on as grass.

4. God made a great light to rule the day and a lesser light to rule the night. A white card with one half covered with starry-night paper. The kids can draw and cut out their sun and moon, and glue them in place.

5. God made the creatures that fly and the creatures that swim. A white card with blue ink sponged/swirled on to make a blue-sky effect, a torn strip of blue vellum attached across the bottom, and a second, narrower torn strip of blue vellum attached at the very bottom edge. The kids can stamp little insect stamps in the sky (butterfly, dragonfly, bee), and color the insects and a fish; they can glue the fish behind, maybe peeking out of, the top flap of the water.

6. God made the creatures that walk on four legs and on two legs. A card covered with green grassy paper. The kids can draw four-legged critters and/or some people, or I might go ahead and buy some animal stickers.

7. God saw that it was good. A plain white card. The kids can decorate it with "celebration" colors of yellow and orange crayon and marker, and/or golden glitter glue!

On the back of every card I'm going to add the number of the day or the corresponding number of dots, so the kids can put them in order by themselves. I'm also going to decorate small envelopes with the blue sponge/swirl effect and add the text, "In the beginning, God created...," with possibly golden effects on the envelope flap. I need to make sure I end up with a set for me! and a set for the classroom.

This has been really fun to work on, in part because I actually started way ahead -- four weeks beforehand. Enough time to make adjustments and not get too frustrated when things don't go as I expect. I'm beginning to realize this is a sort of gift from me to my Godly Play kids. I love Godly Play and its approach to faith formation, and I love my Sunday school class. I'd rather be there than anywhere else on Sunday morning. It's a great gift to be with these kids and help them learn and explore their faith. They naturally approach God as Christ instructed us all: "as a little child."

UPDATE: I made some small changes to the backgrounds for some of the cards, so I edited the descriptions above to reflect those changes and another idea for the green, growing things. (Mostly the 1st, 3rd, 6th days.)