Several years ago I was at a homeschool convention and saw a lady name Kathy Morrisey speak on teaching your children to love the word!  She has a great company called Courtship Connection, on that website you can order this tape-it is so good.  How do you get your children to love Gods Word at a early age?  This is  so important because the older they get the harder it gets to have your children want to read the Bible on their own.  Its true that us parents can require it, and we should, however I wanted my children to Love it, to have a longing to go to it on their own.  I wanted them to know when a tough decision had to be made or someone was sick or when they were discouraged with their own sin or trial thats where they needed to go.  It was a great talk and it taught me a lot.  One of the things she suggested was to have 15 minutes a day where your young children have to read their Bibles, she even suggested for our non-readers to just look at picture Bibles for 15 minutes and they could talk with you about what they saw. Your older children could do longer if you wanted.  This was great because at a young age they would begin to expect Bible time and begin looking forward to it.  Its like anything, its a training time (this might not go smooth at first), it helps to have a timer.  I did this for awhile and then stopped the rountine, so we are starting it again.  She reminded me in another tape of hers that loving the Lord with all our hearts, souls and minds should be first in our children, second, character, and third, academics.  We often forget that its why we Homeschool the Most, yet we often get more worried about math then we do Gods Word.  I'm the first to admit, I'm guilty. 

Another great idea is when you have a child read the whole Bible you have a party for them.  This would be the readers of course.  She says she makes a big event out of it.  They get a certificate and a present from Mom and Dad, she actually sells the certificates on her site.  She wants her children to know that this a great accomplishment, more then anything else they can do except, accept Chist as Savior.  Most adults never accomplish reading the Bible all the way through  so what a great thing to celebrate! Anyway thats a couple of ideas she has for teaching your child to love the Word, she has many more on her tape/CD. 

We have our Bible Study together and devotional time during school and I know my childen see me reading my Bible (which helps)  We set the example, if they know where we go for answers they will remember that as well,  however the ideas Kathy has is a great way to develop our kids personal time with their Savior!

Angela