The Stories We Almost Forgot – Teaching the Bible With Grapevine Studies

During our family devotions we have worked through the gospels twice, the whole New Testament, and are now most of the way through Psalms. When we started our oldest two were maybe 4 and 6, the youngest 2 and one not even born yet. Now, 4 years later, we’re really seeing the benefit of this consistent, slow reading through the bible, stopping to discuss and ask deeper questions as necessary, taking time to settle antsy little ones, and really letting our hearts absorb the message of God’s word.

Our boys are so familiar with the stories of the Old and New Testament, but we still discover new things daily. But I’ve been realizing that our 6 year old, Keekers, has missed out on a lot of the bible stories that her brothers know so well, simply because when we covered them extensively in our daily devos and bible studies, she was too little to remember much of it!

So we’re coming back to the basics of bible study, back to the stories we almost forgot – or in her case, never really knew as well as some others. And we’re doing it with our favourite way of teaching bible stories – Grapevine Studies!

Grapevine Studies really gets into the meat of a topic, event or bible story that we’re probably already quite familiar with, but shows us there’s so much more to unpack and learn each time we read!

By drawing through these stories we help cement the facts of the time period and the reality of what the verses really mean. It also brings it all together in a deeper understanding of who God is and how we can know him through his word.

We take our time going through these studies and so only cover 1 lesson a week, breaking the drawings up into 2 mornings spent together. You can certainly do it at a faster pace, but there’s no pressure this way to finish quickly if younger ones get tired before we’re done.

Our weekly memory verse doesn’t always seem like a “typical” memory verse you would memorize, but always hits home the meaning of what we’re reading.

Take our current study, Moses and the Exodus, for example – this week’s memory verse is Exodus 8:22 –

“But on that day I will set apart the land of Goshen, where my people dwell, so that no swarms of flies shall be there, that you many know that I AM the LORD in the midst of the earth.”

The message here? God prevented the swarms of flies in the plague he sent on the Egyptians from touching the land of Goshen, smack dab in the country of Egypt. How? Because HE IS the LORD, the Creator, mighty and powerful over all things.

See what I mean? We’re not just talking the basics of bible stories there, though all of that is covered. We’re talking depth of understanding Who God is. I love it!

And so do the kids. They clamour to help draw the pictures each day and though I haven’t let them yet, I think I may hand the duty off to one of them once, just to see how it goes.

Our tips for using Grapevine Studies:

Keep the Teacher’s Manual on a mobile device – that saves on paper! I store it on our iPad on Google Drive. That way I can also take a break once in a while from drawing and let the kids just copy the zoomed-in picture from the iPad.

I’ve also learned, as a Type-A, in-the-box thinker, stick-to-the-rules follower, to let them take some creative license with their drawings ;0) Because they’ll do it anyway, so they may as well have mom’s consent.

Yes, Moses is wearing a top hat. And he has a beard. A bit Abraham Lincoln-esque, no?

Print the student drawing pages double-sided – just make sure you turn the paper the right way to print on the other side (see photo above – yeah, directionally challenged over here).

Involve toddlers whenever possible – but if it isn’t working, let them go! Don’t stress over it.

Miss E loves to get in on the action! But she doesn’t always last the whole lesson.

With the traceable sheets she’s able to {sort of} trace the drawings in her dry-erase activity center, or colour the pictures on her own. She doesn’t always do it with us, but when she does, I know she’s getting exposed to God’s word just by being there.

Finally, let some of your older kids read the Scripture verses – it’s great read-aloud practice and lets them ask the questions while reading first-hand the accounts from God’s word.