Help Children Discover God's Word!

Yesterday I wrote about how we need to focus on, "getting children to actually open their Bibles to look for information and learn to find answers in God's Word", so today I want to think about a couple ways we could do exactly this.

Please know when I talk about focusing on getting children into their Bibles, I am not talking about them listening to teachers talk or having to fill in the blanks in workbooks. I am not advocating a return to more traditional teaching methods. However; I'm also not saying we should just engage children in games and activities which keep their attention, but rarely have them opening their Bibles for themselves to discover what God's Word says.

Instead I would like to see us build an excitement in children so they want to discover for themselves what God's Word has to say! Consider the following ideas of how to do this . . . 

• Assign classes specific portions of the week's Bible adventure to each class and have children make posters to show what they discovered the Bible had to say. During the large group Bible adventure, allow time for each class to share what they discovered about the Bible adventure.
• In small groups, talk with the children about the Bible adventure and ask children to think of questions they might have about the event, how it applies to their lives and how they might live what they learned. Have children write these down and then get into groups to discover the answers by opening their Bibles and finding out what God's Word has to say.
• Give small groups time to share with their classes about what they learned.
• Each week give children time to share how they lived what they learned from the previous week.

These are just a few simple ideas of how you could focus on engaging children in God's Word and at the same time help them see how God's Word is for them, something they can understand and most definitely not boring!

What do you do to help children discover God's Word for themselves?