Hello Everyone!
I am SUPER excited to share with you today, because I have a wonderful Bible Study product to share. The Love Drops Adult Coloring Bible Study is actually originally designed to be used as a personal or small group Bible study, but I think it is PERFECT to use as part of our home school curriculum!!! I have been using these lessons with my 12 year old daughter for around a year now, and we have both enjoyed them ever so much! And when I changed to doing something different for our school Bible time, she told me "Mom, I really liked what we were doing before better!" So I would have to say it is "kid approved!" And I really feel like these are adaptable age-wise for much younger children as well as older teens as well!
First of all, let me not forget to say that Love Drops is just ONE of the great Bible studies from the Bible Stories From the Heart team has written. There are also other studies such as Exodus, Draw in Nearer, New Beginnings, Devotions, Nature Walk and last but not least, Christmas Joy. And more studies are being written all the time!
The Love Drops study starts out with telling a little bit about their goals, which they share as two fold:
1) Intentional Bible Study (searching for God's love)
2) Reflective Journal Writing (reflecting on God's love/S.O.A.P.)
Many of you may already be familiar with the S.O.A.P. method of Bible study, which stands for:
Scripture, Observation, Application, and Prayer. The Bible Stories from the Heart Team uses the S.O.A.P. method to help get the person doing the Bible study INTO the Word of God themselves--instead of passively reading about something but not REALLY wrestling with it and applying it to your life is easy to do, when you are just reading. But when we stop and actually apply the verses that we are reading to our lives, asking ourselves questions about what we are reading and about how we are going to apply what we are learning to our lives brings our Bible study to a much deeper level.
At the beginning of the studies, there are small group suggestions, so if you are using this study with a group in your home or in a group at your church there are VERY helpful suggestions as to how often to meet, and how much time to plan on for different parts of your group meeting etc. But as I already mentioned, I am going to recommend that you look at these studies as a gold mine for your home school Bible time!
And the frosting on the cake--what has made this such a neat and enjoyable way for my daughter and I to interact together as well as to interact with God's Word is that for each Bible lesson there is an art project to go along with it! You can simply color these pictures, using crayons, colored pencils, etc., you can trace or scan them out and paint them and keep them in a binder, or you can post them up in your school area. They can also be used as neat little gifts for your children to give away to grandparents or visiting in nursing homes, or made into cards to mail away and bring cheer! The possibilities are endless! And the art page is easy enough for your child and yet complicated enough to be enjoyable for you the parent as well!
The Bible Stories from the Heart devotions are all divided into different weeks. In the study Love Drops, there are five different weekly studies. In using these in our home school, I will roughly do one lesson per week, using them as our Bible study for the day. Each day we just read and study a couple more parts. If we for some reason do not finish with one of the devotions before the week ends, we don't worry about it. We simply keep going on Monday, and take whatever time we need the next week to finish it up. So I am not too worried about beginning on a Monday and finishing on a Friday. It's all good--just go through the devotions with your children, taking turns reading sections out loud and then discussing them. With five devotions in the Love Drops study, it will take us at least five weeks--maybe a couple weeks more, deepening on our speed.
In the Love Drops lesson, the first devotion lesson starts with focus verses of Luke 12:35-40. This is the story of the faithful servant and the evil servant. First thing, the verses are printed right in the study, so you are reading the actual story straight from the Bible. I like this! Then there are a couple paragraphs giving the history in Biblical times. It talks about how in the Bible times people typically wore long robes. And when your long robe got in your way of doing whatever duty you needed to do, you would keep your robe tucked into the belt around your waist. And this is where the phrase "let your waist be girded" came from. This phrase was common back then, and it meant how the servants should remain dressed and ready to serve their masters at all times. Then there is a conection to us section, helping to give questions and thoughts about applying this servant-master concept to our lives and how we also need to be "girded and ready" at all times to serve our master.
Then the study moves to the focus words. These are words chosen from each week's study that help us understand at a deeper level what the verses are saying to us. The focus words for this time come from Luke 12:40, which says "Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect."
The focus words are:
Be--(verb) cause to occur
Ready--(adjective) in a suitable state for an activity, action, or situation; fully prepare
The devotion then helps us to see how the words "be" and "ready" requires action on our part. It is suggested that you reflect and pray over those words for a little while, and ask God to show you some specific areas in your life that may need help in becoming ready for our master's return. This is a very abbreviated description--there is a LOT more in the actual study in this section. Leslie Eaton, the author of all the Bible Stories From the Heart lessons, is truly gifted with words. She has a beautiful and nonthreatening way of using words on paper to help guide you into reflecting on your own personal relationship with your Savior.
Right after this section, there is a beautiful poem entitled "Ready or Not" by Deborah Ann Belka. I am thinking of using the poem in our home school for some memory work. I am always wanting something uplifting and encouraging for my daughter to memorize, and I think having her memorize a reflective poem about what we may be doing when Jesus returns is a much better use of our time than her memorizing some piece of nonsense poem!
Finally, there is a list of six devotion one discussion questions. These questions can be used however you would like--I do not ask my daughter to write out her answers, rather I like to use these questions as discussion questions for she and I to discuss together. But you can use them in whatever way you would like. The questions for this lesson are as follows:
1) What is your big takeaway from this week's lesson?
2) Do you think most people prepare more for out of town company coming to their house than their Lord and Savior coming back? Why?
3) Do you think it is sometimes easy to forget that we are the servants and that God is our master? Why?
4) Do you consider the word servant to be a positive or negative word in relation to us and Christ? Why?
5) What do you think most people fail to do on a daily basis in order to "Be girded?"
6) What are you going to strive to do from this point forward as a result of studying this scripture?
After the discussion questions, there is the SOAP activity page. You are encouraged to choose any verse from the weekly focus verses to reflect deeper upon. They reprint right in the study for ease the Bible verses again, so they are right there on the page for you. Then they review the SOAP devotion instructions--reminding you what each thing represents, and then there is a blank SOAP form page--this one I do usually have my daughter fill out, and while SHE is filling out her page, I am filling out mine! :)
Now it is time for dessert--the art page! These are all done by the very talented Nicole Plymesser Nelson, and I so much appreciate her sharing her artistic talents with the rest of us who are not so talented! For this first lesson in Love Drops, the art page has to do with Luke 12:40. I like to do my pages on watercolor paper, so I print out a page from the Love Drops pdf and put it on my light tracer and trace it onto a watercolor paper that is sized to fit into my Bible notebook. I trace the picture, color it with my watercolor pencils, and then add the water to turn the colored pencils into paint. After the paint is dry, I go over my pencil lines with permanent marker. Here is a picture of my art page from this lesson:
Doing an art page has been an awesome way to spend some time reflecting on God's Word in a hands-on way! And I think this is one reason why these lessons are great for children--my daughter absolutely LOVES doing the art pages!!! And I love them just as much! Neither one of us do the page in a "perfect" way, but we do have fun and what better way to combine God's Word, fun, and art all at the same time!
Some of the later art pages from the later devotions in Love Drops are as follows:
Now--Love Drops is available both in paper form, as well as in a pdf form. If you are just looking for something to do for yourself, in your own quiet time with the Lord, you might like the paper book form. But if you are wanting to do this with your children in home school, I recommend getting the pdf form. They are available on Amazon here:
Bible Stories from the Heart
There is also an AWESOME Facebook community! Look up "Bible Stories From the Heart" and if it says the name Leslie Eaton, that is the right one! Ask to join the group, and you will be amazed at the sweet Christian spirit you will find there! You can post pictures of your or your children's art work there, and everyone is so sweet and uplifting with their comments! There is also a great web site which you can find here: Bible Stories From the Heart There are also some really neat videos to go along with the different studies, which you can find on the web site. Sometimes my daughter and I like to watch Leslie "teach" us the devotional lesson, and instead of reading the lesson out loud back and forth we both enjoy watching Leslie's video lesson instead!
Well--that is everything I can think of to tell you. I hope you have enjoyed learning about the Love Drops Bible study, and about all the Bible Stories From the Heart studies. And if any of you decide to try one of these studies in your home schools, be sure to let me know how you like them!
~Susan
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Disclaimer--I received a free copy of the Love Drops pdf in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are completely my own, and I LOVE LOVE LOVE these Bible studies and have used several of them in my home school for our Bible class.
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