Judah Bible Curriculum: A TOS Review
Sacha’s<25: A entirely different way of studying the Bible with your children.
Home in the Trenches Product Rating (out of 10 stars)
* Normally I would rate this product….however I will not be doing this for this review….read more to find out about Judah Bible Curriculum….it just can’t be summed up….
What We Reviewed:
Purchase Judah Bible Curriculum delivered online:
Total $44.00.
Download e-book and begin today!
You get:
1) Judah Bible Curriculum K-12 Manual, e-book format to download;
2) Elementary Notebook Ideas booklet to view online or download;
3) Eight-lecture Teacher Training Seminar. listen online or download.
It isn’t very often that I am lacking for words, but on this occasion I am. This was such a hard review to write because I just don’t get it. I have spent hours listening to audios and pouring over the Judah Bible Curriculum website and materials only to be more confused than when I started.
I was really exited to be able to review this curriculum. They state that their goal is for you to be able to teach the Bible without any curriculum. That sounds great in theory. However, I wasn’t ready to have to learn a whole new philosophy of educating my children and studying the Bible. If you aren’t wanting to learn this and put the time into trying to understand it, then this isn’t the curriculum for you.
Without the review crew forum I would have been even more lost than I ended up being. Being able to read about how some people are trying to implement this was a big help, but still was more than I could comprehend.
Here’s a little background on the curriculum:
From their website:
The Judah Bible Curriculum for Christian schools and homeschools. It is a Principle Approach curriculum for Bible class designed to help you, the parent or teacher, build into yourself and your students a practical knowledge of God and His word and His ways.
The Judah Bible Curriculum Is:
- A Principle Approach curriculum for Bible class.
- Develop a comprehensive knowledge of the Bible.
- Build strong, Godly character in your children.
- Study the Bible together.
- Study the hand of God in the lives of individuals and nations.
- For homeschool, Christian school, Sunday school.
- Teach your children living Biblical principles to guide their lives.
- Apply God’s word personally in every area of life.
- The Bible is the textbook.
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Principle Approach refers to a philosophy of education whose content and methods are designed to build character in teacher and student capable of sustaining liberty.
Our Experience:
It took me almost 4 weeks to really wrap my head (even a little bit) around this curriculum. Actually, I would consider it to be more a method of teaching the Bible rather than a curriculum (which I would expect to be laid out for you). This is taught using the Principle Approach to Education.
I listened to some of the audio, read all of the manual, looked at all of the example pages, studied the website, spent hours thinking about it and still had no idea what it all meant and how I was supposed to teach my students using Judah Bible’s ideas. I have never spent this much time trying to figure out a curriculum, not even when I first started Sonlight.
I wanted to call it quits and not even try to use this with the kids, because it was just so confusing and convoluted. But, that isn’t my style and I wanted to try to make it work. I am not sure what I am exactly supposed to do with my students, but I can tell you what we did do.
I started out by printing out the lesson 1 instructions and the example pages. The basic gist is that you are supposed to pray about what God wants to teach you through the lesson and then read the chapters mentioned in the Bible. In our case Lesson 1 is Genesis 1-2. I did this without the kids. I needed to figure out what I was supposed to do, what it all meant, and how would I teach this to ages 3-12! I spent about an hour and a half reading and filling out the 4 different sheets that Judah Bible provides. These sheets are supposed to be added to a Bible notebook that you would be keeping. The author doesn’t want this to be busy work for you or your children but something that is of value that you will keep and add to.
The four sheets are all that are needed to make your Bible notebook. You will make copies of these and fill them out over and over for each individual, event, document (command or major ideas etc), and institution that you run into over your studies. I had started 9 different sheets just for Genesis 1 and 2.
Judah Bible really wants to break you and your children away from filling out answers and hurrying through Bible study curriculum. They want you to spend time thinking about what you are studying and how it applies to your life and the lives of those around you. While in theory this sounds great, it was a lot of work to get me to have an idea of how to do this.
After I read and studied in the morning I just read the chapters to the kids in the evening and spoke to them about some of the things that I had learned. The next study time spent was looking up some things in the Bible dictionary and some of the cross references from what I had read. I didn’t have any of them fill out the sheets because I am still trying to figure out how to fill them out myself!
One of the most exciting things that happened after the study that night was the my 5 year old went off by herself and drew pictures of The Adam and Eve story and then narrated what she wanted me to type to add to the top of her pictures. This was really cool and I was excited to see that she did this. I might need to mention that it is her favorite story from the Bible right now, so I am not sure that it is totally due to my teaching with this curriculum.
This curriculum also has a big emphasis on government. This has to do with all types of government starting with self-governing and governments as we know them.
To sum it up:
Bottom line is that I think this is more of a Bible study guide than a curriculum. Every other curriculum I have ever dealt with has had many more helpful resources for the teacher to help them know what and how to teach. In contrast this guide encourages you to take the time to do your own study before you teach it. This will take time..lots of time. Bible study is good, but this isn’t like any other curriculum that you have.
100 years from now all that will really matter is our relationship with God and knowing, loving, and abiding in Him. I don’t want to discourage anyone from studying God’s word, just be prepared to put the time in, as we all should.
The important information:
Judah Bible
Order from: http://www.judahbible.com/
Price: For a hardcopy of all materials—$69.00, plus 5.00 p&h, or download all materials for $44.
To read other TOS Crew reviews of this product click here.
Disclosure/Disclaimer: I received the above product free of charge for review purposes. I am only expected to give an honest review.
