I FINALLY did it after talking about it for years... started a summer Bible study for kids.

Our church is small and we've never had Vacation Bible School, at least not since Big D and I have been here.  I've thought about starting one, but prefer more Bible study and fewer crafts.  I knew I wanted to target slightly older kids and help them to establish study skills that will last their whole life long.  Then about a year ago I found some neat little Bible study books by Kay Arthur of Precept Ministries.  I got my Bible study start with Precept In and Out (easier version of the real thing) doing their Covenant study when I was around 11 or 12.  These newer books by Kay Arthur actually target a younger audience (maybe 8-12) and introduce the kids to inductive Bible study methods.  The book we're using is Jesus in the Spotlight, John chapters 1-10.  Big D was skeptical that kids would get excited about studying the Bible, or their parents for that matter, but we had a nice turn out for our first meeting of 13.  We had a good mix of friends from church and friends from our neighborhood.  

Because of Big D's concerns I decided we'd spend the majority of our first meeting working on the first week's questions together.  I think the older kids got a little bored since the younger ones struggled a bit to keep up, but all in all it went well.  

Here's some of what they learned:

1.  Bible study is more than just reading the Bible and requires reading the same passage over and over again multiple times.  They began by simply reading the chapter being studied for the week to get the general narrative, then they read the first 18 verses again noting key words, then they read the chapter again several verses at a time answering individual questions.    

2.  They learned that oft repeated words in a passage are key words.  They also learned how to mark key words so that they can see the patterns of repitition.

3.  They learned how to unlock the main idea of a passage by noting the key words in that passage. 

For some reason the two Big boys, Monk and his friend, are hiding off camera.

When Big D was in seminary he took a course on Biblical hermeneutics by Howard Hendricks.  This is the class he values above all others from his seminary experience.  In it he learned that Bible study begins with observation.  We tend to overestimate our powers of observation and Dr. Hendricks would gently show this to his students by asking them to make observations from one verse.  I think he'd start with 10.  Then the next class he'd ask them to make 10 more observations from that same verse and so on until they began to realize there was more to observataion than a casual once over.  Anyway, all that by way of saying the kids in our summer Bible study are beginning at the starting place.  Before you can interpret what you read or apply it to your life, you must make careful and accurate observations from the text.  Our kids are learning to do that and I think that's exciting!

Oh, and we had some fun, too.  Twinkle Toes made refreshments and the kids played in the backyard after our study time.

Oh and it was Monk's 11th birthday yesterday, too.  We got him a full-size keyboard for his room so he can play til his heart's content, even when little ones are sleeping.