As Christian teachers, parents, grandparents, and caregivers, we want our kids to love God’s Word. We long for them to grow closer to God as they spend time in Scripture. But how do we encourage engagement with the Bible? By giving them a compelling reason to pick it up and read it.
Engaging Kids with Interactive Bible Activities
We infuse the printed Word with illustrations that bring the stories and people to life, provide features that fill in contextual information, and give kids practical reasons why the Bible matters in their everyday lives.
We want our kids to know that God’s Word changes us! It can transform our hearts, minds, and spirits if we allow it to. At Tyndale, we wanted to capture the practical and transformational power of the Bible for our kids, so we created the Go Bible. The Go Bible helps kids understand the life-changing effects of spending time in Scripture. The interactive features draw kids in and keep their attention—and give caretakers ideas for discipling their own children. Below are some fun features we included that we pray will keep kids opening their Bibles over and over again. You can adapt these and create your own Bible games and activities.
Creative Scripture Memorization Techniques
- Scripture Memorization—Give kids an interactive way to memorize Scripture. Provide activities based on the memory verse that help them internalize God’s Word. Kids are active learners. Giving them ways to embed Scripture in their memory will help to ensure that it stays with them much longer.
- Choose to Change—Kids face a variety of situations every day. Situations that give them the opportunity to make good—or not-so-good—choices. One way to stretch their thinking and discernment muscles is to provide multiple-choice answers to a situation they might face and ask them how God would have them respond. Talk it through and back up your choice with Scripture.
- Seek and Find—Kids love games, and they love to find hidden things. Choose a book of the Bible and ask them to find specific people, situations, or lessons in that book. For example: In Genesis, find two brothers who were enemies but became friends, and find people whose names God changed. You can go on and on with this, and kids will never know you are teaching them to study their Bible!
- Factoids—Kids also love trivia! And, done well, trivia is a great way to teach them the context around Bible stories while making them feel like they know something no one else does.
We’ve crafted a couple additional products that will release with the Go Bible. Key Verse Challenge takes the 125 memory verses and their activities from the Go Bible and puts them in a book of perforated cards for kids to use as they work on their Scripture memory. Kids can create trading and matching games with the cards while having a handy reference as they learn individual verses.
We’ve also created a small booklet that tells kids the overarching story of the gospel from Genesis through Revelation. Helping kids understand the continuity of the Bible is a major step in keeping them engaged. The Gospel Story for Kids is a great giveaway book for church visitors and for regular attenders at holiday times.
These are just a few of the ways we’ve worked to create a Bible that engages, encourages, and teaches kids. Take a look at the Go Bible to see what else we’ve done, and let’s GO make the Bible a well-loved and well-used part of our kids’ lives.
To learn more about Go Bible and the ways this unique Bible and additional resources can impact the children in your Kids’ ministry, please visit http://tyndale.life/GoBiblePRarticle.
