One of the greatest parts about homeschooling is the freedom to include religion in your child’s studies. For Christian families, including Latter Day Saint families, this often includes teaching the Bible timeline.
Different families go about teaching the Bible timeline to their kids in different ways. Some families like to find beautiful images or premade Bible timelines and print them out to hang in their learning space. Other families prefer having their kids illustrate major events as they come up in their lessons over time.
3 Simple Approaches for Bible Timeline Teaching
There is really no right or wrong way to teach the Bible timeline in your homeschool. So long as the major concepts you want to cover are coming across, the method you choose to take is really up to you.
That being said, here are 3 simple approaches to consider taking as you teach the Bible timeline.
- Chronological reading – Begin reading the Bible as a family, starting in Genesis. Have your kids watch for major events or influential people they want to add to their timeline. Either draw your own images or find images online that represent these events and add them to your timeline.
- Principle-based reading – Teach your kids biblical lessons such as honesty, bravery, compassion, etc. As you focus on a concept, look up stories from the Bible that teach these lessons. Write these lessons down and add them to your timeline.
- Study history using your regular history curriculum. Look up events that happened in the Bible around that same time. Add these to your timeline.
Why Combine World History with a Bible Timeline for Kids?
There are many reasons to consider including a biblical timeline in your child’s world history lessons. Many Christian children, including Latter Day Saint children, are already familiar with many events from the Bible. Associating these events with major events that happened throughout history is just one more way to engage the brain and another of your child’s learning styles.
Including biblical events in your history lessons is also a good way to bring up important concepts such as appropriate character traits or other life lessons. Did a certain historical event happen because a person was not doing what they were supposed to be doing and living a God-fearing life? Pointing these kinds of situations out to your child can go a long way in helping them see the benefits of staying true to what they believe throughout their entire lives.
Believing in God should not just be something we do on Sundays. Our religious beliefs should overflow into every aspect of our lives. Tying Bible studies into other lessons and subjects is a simple way to reinforce this lesson in our homes.
Online Resources for Teaching the Bible Timeline
There are so many ways to teach the Bible timeline in your homeschool. The route you take really depends on the amount of work you want to put into it.
If you want an easy to use resource that already has everything you need to teach your kids the Bible timeline, LightSail is a great option. The LightSail homeschool program includes a library of tens of thousands of books, images, and media, including the King James Version of the Bible. Use this platform to lay out every major event that happened throughout history according to the Bible.
In addition to biblical timeline content, LightSail’s Premium subscription includes World Book Encyclopedia’s Timelines. This interactive database contains over 650 premade timelines and over 14,000 individual events. Customize one of the pre-made history timelines to suit your needs, or create your own from scratch. It’s easy to combine the secular or traditional timelines with the biblical timelines and create your own customized world history lesson plan for your kids.
Show your kids what was going on in the world when Jesus Christ was born. Share with them the rise and fall of the Roman Empire and how that affected the life of Christ’s people. When you’re through teaching the timeline, be sure to take a look at some of the great historical fiction resources that take a biblical worldview. Dive into the world of LightSail and begin teaching the Bible timeline for kids today!
Posted on 7.Jul.21 in Faith-based
