Discipling Our Kids in 2011

I love January! I love the chance to plan and organize for the upcoming year. Steve and I do our own "State of the Family" meeting during which we critique the past year and set objectives for the new one. When we've had a bad year, we can move on with a clean slate (isn't God's grace wonderful!), and when we've had a good year, we are motivated to do even better. We cover every topic from household routines and travel to health and finances (this last one is Steve's favorite--is it dorky to bring Quicken charts to a family meeting?!). As our family grows, however, my new favorite area is family discipleship. All sorts of terms fall under this category--"character development," "homeschooling," "modeling," "Bible study," "self-discipline," "life skills," "family worship," "preschool," "obedience"--but the foundational objective is teaching our children to love God, to love His Word, and to serve people as Jesus did. We take our commission from Deuteronomy 6:4-9:

Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

We are new at this, and all we have to go on is what we know from watching Sam learn so far (but hey, we are the ones who know our kids best; that's why God made parents to be the primary teachers and disciplers, right?). When it comes to teaching God's Word, here are a few of things we are trying in 2011:

Each week we learn a new Bible story. From Christmas to Easter, we learn about the life of Jesus, culminating in His death and resurrection to save us from our sins. After Easter, we learn about the early church in Acts and our call to be missionaries spreading the Good News. The second half of the year we learn stories from the Old Testament--always pointing to God's redemptive plan born out of His love for us--leading up to Christmas as the fulfillment of long-awaited prophecies. We read the story daily from our Bible (ours is NASB, but we want to get Sam his own Bible). Then we reinforce the story by listening to it repeatedly on Grandpa's audio Bible (thank you to Uncle Bill, who bought this for Grandpa Goertzen, then allowed us to keep it after Grandpa passed away). We also talk about the story throughout the day, quizzing Sam about the facts and discussing applications at a toddler level. Finally, we pick a related verse to memorize. Sam still has trouble memorizing a verse from start to finish, but he can say it with prompts (the first word of each phrase, for example). Steve and I plan to implement a memorization box soon.

I'm basing my own personal study time on the same plan, going deeper with some inductive techniques like marking, cross-referencing, word studies, and reading surrounding chapters for context. During this stage of life with little ones, in which my opportunities for study are unpredictable, I have extra accountability knowing my study time will directly impact how I teach my kids. And I am finding it easy to memorize verses, since I get plenty of time to practice simply by helping Sam memorize; that is something we can do while playing, driving, working, etc.

What suggestions do you have for teaching young kids about the Bible?