Melissa has taught third grade using the Bible Study Guide curriculum for over six years. We both love this curriculum so much that we have purchased our own personal set!
The curriculum is broken into four units which cover the entire Bible. You have the choice to order which level of student worksheets you feel is is best suited for your students. Personally, I prefer to use the advanced version worksheets, even for our younger students. Only on occasion have we felt the need to substitute an intermediate worksheet in place of an advanced worksheet. That is one of the major benefits of this curriculum, being able to adapt for a wide range of levels. They even offer worksheets recommended for preschool age children.
In addition to the student worksheets, there are also many other optional resources that can be purchased to utilize in your classroom such as:
Unit Teacher's Guide - Detailed instructions and lesson plans are included in each unit. These are a must have! There are suggested drills, review questions, additional Scriptures with background information provided to aid in a greater understanding of each lesson. Maybe it is because I'm a visual learner but one of my favorite parts of the teacher guides are the corresponding visuals for each lesson. They are very simple illustrations using stick figures but we have found them very helpful when we've enlarged them and mounted them to astrobrite cardstock.
Advanced Teacher Key - When we first started using this curriculum, the company did not offer answer keys for the worksheets causing us to really dig for the answers! Since they are now offered, we have added them to our teaching materials. We still find it best to dig for your own answers validated by Scripture.
The Bible Book Summary Cards - Another must have in my opinion. These are one of my go to tools if we complete our lesson a few minutes early. They make reviewing facts about the books of the Bible fun with the colorful visuals and suggested questions to engage the students.
Wall Maps & Timeline - We both like and use the maps, but found the timeline better to use in a homeschool setting. We found the pieces on the timeline too small for use in a classroom. See this post to see what I use for my timeline in my classroom.
Children's Songs CD - Have not purchased, so unable to offer a review.
So how do we use this material in our classroom?
Each Sunday morning class we have a pre-activity set up for early arrivers to complete as everyone arrives. This allows us time to greet any guests we have in class and just converse with our students about events going on in their lives. Other times, I use those first few minutes covering the "Remember It?" section of the worksheet.
Before class, we write the Book & Chapter of what we will be studying. It only takes new students a week or two to get accustomed to looking at the dry erase board and they can quickly be prepared with open bibles.
Because we have a limited time (approximately 40 minutes) we get right into the meat of our lesson! We work through the worksheet one block at a time, by reading the recommended Scripture and discussing the questions/answer/application for each passage. This gives the students practice finding the correct Scripture and reading and following along from God's Word.
In order to help younger students, we have found it beneficial to make an overhead transparency of the "block" section of each worksheet. We then laminate the transparency for longevity and be sure to label the transparency with the lesson level and number. ***(If you do not label the transparencies, it can become tricky to differentiate the corresponding lesson, because they look very similar - I learned this a hard way when making a batch of transparencies).
You could also use a document camera or Elmo to display the worksheets in the same way but we are "old school" and just can't seem to part with our overhead projectors! :)
Once the "block" section of the worksheet is completed we then have the flexibility to review and discuss other sections such as the Timeline, Map or Apply It portions of the worksheet on the opposite side.
Example of Time Line & Apply It section below.
I hope this helps give you a glimpse of how we utilize this curriculum in our classroom. We would love to hear your ideas and how you use this same curriculum teaching God's Word!
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