Route 52 book

OK, so the book that I switched to is called. Route 52 - A 52 week Bible Journey Just for Kids. It is more of a Sunday School teacher book. Don't panic I am not a teacher but I think it will work. It is broken down into 12 months with 4 lessons a month.

So I have done two weeks now out of this book. Here is how I am using this teachers guide to do our devotions each morning. Since we only have 10-12 minutes I take each Sunday's lesson and make it work for the whole week. It does take a bit more time so we are working on our morning time management but the kids really are liking it so far. Using each Sunday for the whole week makes it less stressful for me to do it too.

My kids are still young enough that worksheets and games are fun so it is working. So for example our theme this month is the Jesus Birth Helps me Worship and it talks about God keeping his promises. We have all month to learn the bible verse and if we get it they give you a second one you can learn. Each weeks lesson is broken down into sections so we just do a section each morning. The Bible Search is a section (I like this one because I get to teach them how to use their Bibles and looks stuff up in it), Bible story is one section (It is told out of the workbook about what it says in the Bible that we read the day before, for example our first story was told by Zechariah and his encounter with Gabriel, working on our verse with worksheets or games is a section, Then the last few days of the week if we have time we go over some questions they have in the book or finish our project for the week if there was one.

So far my kids are loving it. It does take some time on my part ahead of time to make sure I get the pages copied and just set up the week. But over all I am liking it a lot. The biggest downfall for me is that it does not say right in the workbook to pray after every section... so if we are rushed on time we sometimes have to pray in the car because I forgot. The little devotion books I did before had the prayer as part of the devotion and we just added our part to it.

We only have 8 more days of school so I will be switching over to our summer book and will post about it then. We will pick this book back up in time for the next chapter/month's theme.

Devotion Time with the kids...

As a working mom of two kids I find time management my biggest struggle. Time for the kids, the housework, the yard work, devotion time, time with my husband, my job, etc. There are days when it seems I have no time for any of that or such limite time. Devotion time for myself is very hard to find. It is not a habbit that I learned as a child, and it is one I struggle with daily as an adult. I love it when I do get that time alone with just God and myself. As my children have gotten old enough to read I felt that I needed to start devotion time with them so that they can learn it now before the pressures of others things press in and maybe they will not struggle as I did with the time factor for devotions.

It has taken us about two years to figure it out time wise. Summers are worse because we do not have as strict a schedule and we do not have just one sitter so every day in the week can be different. But during the school year we found the time and all three of us love the time we get to spend together and in God's word. We worked our morning routine so that we have about 18 minutes of free time between getting ready for work and school and getting on the bus. I admit that I have to really watch the clock and stay on them to get things done in that time frame but for the most part it works and when it does not they get upset we did not have time. But for the most part it works and we love it. We only wish that Daddy could be there with us. (He has to be at work before any of us get up.)

Finding something we can do in that short of time has also been a challange. For about a year we have been doing this series of books.. Little Book Devotions 31 Daily Devotionals published by Brighton Books. They are pretty neat. For 31 days you are on one topic, like sharing, kindess, forginess etc. Since we usually only do devotion time during the week it takes us over a month to do the whole book. I like the format, it is simple and you get kid tips and parent tips, bible verses to learn and a short prayer. It really helped me to get started since I had no clue how to do devotions with my kids. After we went through all the books I could find at my local Christian book store. I needed to do something new. My next post will be on one of the two new books we are going to try.

I just wanted to get out there the books I have been using and how much that the kids and I both love the time we get to spend together learning. There is just something about learning together and seeing them get it that gives me such joy!