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Children's Discipleship CurriculumIndependent Review by Teri Ann Berg OlsonTeri Olson was searching for discipleship materials for home schoolers and stumbled across "I Want to Teach You What I Believe". She was so excited about what she found, she wrote the entire article below and placed it on her homeschooling web site to share with others. As you read her review, you will see that she read "I Want to Teach You What I Believe" from cover to cover. "I Want to Teach You What I Believe" In 2002, VCLI published a Children's Discipleship Curriculum entitled I Want to Teach You What I Believe - a scripted guide to discipling your own child. There are three primary goals of this program:
What a wonderful concept! The above objectives are achieved through the following strategies:
The I Want to Teach You What I Believe Parent's Guide is an 8 ½ x 11" softcover book containing 413 pages. Each student will need a spiral-bound notebook to use as a journal. The only other materials required are a dry-erase marker board and marking pen, or a chalk board and chalk. A large note pad (with or without an easel) would also work. The children's discipleship curriculum is user-friendly and easy to follow. It features 92 scripted, interactive, biblical lessons within 23 chapters. Chapters 1-8 focus on Foundations of the Christian Faith. (These comprise 1/3 of the book.) Chapters 9-23 are based on Seven Areas of Life: Spiritual, Psychological, Physical, Social, Financial, Marital, and Parental. (These comprise 2/3 of the book.) Parents should plan to study one lesson per week. Each lesson contains four sessions, so if you teach one session per day, this is perfect for homeschoolers who operate on a four-day week. Or, depending on the attention span of your child, you can go ahead and teach all four sessions at one time. (Each session takes approximately 15-20 minutes to teach.) Every session is followed by a review of the lesson. This is an excellent curriculum for teaching your own children at home. Busy parents will find it easy to use, because no advance preparation is necessary. Since it is a parent's guide only and not a workbook (the child writes in a separate notebook), the book is reusable over and over again. All you have to do is simply read the scripted text and follow the directions. The Parent's Guide will tell you what to say, what questions to ask your child, what to draw or write on the marker board, when to have your child look up a verse and read from the Bible, and when to pray with your child. It even provides teaching tips and includes sample illustrations so you can see what your marker board diagrams are supposed to look like. The basic concepts in the book are simple enough for young children to understand, but they are interesting enough for older students as well. Thus, this curriculum is adaptable for children in all age groups, from preschoolers to teenagers. (We started using it simultaneously with our 8- and 13-year old sons). Nevertheless, take a quick look at the lessons ahead of time to consider whether the topic is suitable for your child's age group. For example, in the chapter about the Physical Area of Life there is a discussion of purity and sex. While the lesson is appropriate and scripturally-based, you may want to save it for a future date. Much more than a Bible study, the children's discipleship curriculum will help develop your child's character, improve their relationships with friends and siblings, and emphasize their responsibilities toward others, as it covers such practical areas as selfishness and how to live with impossible people. In particular, the course is ideal for children who are growing into young adults and on the verge of taking on new responsibilities. The purpose of this curriculum is to help your child as a whole grow up with God, and it will train him or her to become a young adult who knows how to be responsible in all areas of life. Too many people have problems in their relationships, marriage, family, and finances because they never learned how to base these things on godly principles. This course will put your child on the right track with a strong biblical foundation. I especially like the sessions entitled "God Chose Me to Teach You" and "Good Parents Teach Their Children…" - after all, isn't that what homeschooling is all about? And in the final chapter, the child has an opportunity to pretend to be the parent and get to practice teaching you! This children's discipleship curriculum will serve as a means to promote spiritual and personal maturity within your family. As you and your child work closely together using this book, you will find that your relationship with your children as well as your own personal relationship with the Lord will be strengthened. * * * Table of ContentsLesson 1: I Want to Teach You What I Believe * * * |
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