Family Scripture Study with Young Children

"May I suggest that in our family night gatherings we make it a project to memorize one scripture citation a week pertinent to this work. At the conclusion of a year our children will have on their lips a fund of scripture which will remain with them throughout their lives."(Conference Report, April 1959; Teachings of Gordon B. Hinckley, p. 344; Gene R. Cook, Searching the Scriptures: Bringing Power to Your Personal and Family Study, p. 115).

What a CHALLENGE!!!

During the last few days I have been thinking about how it is about time to really start getting into Family Scripture Study. We read our scriptures every day as a couple, which used to be our whole family, but now we have a little boy (who is a few months shy of 2 years old) and we sometimes read with him but it has not become a consistent habit. He is definitely at an age where he can grasp a lot and I feel bad that this wasn't made a consistent habit earlier...but at least we are going to start now, right!?!

So with all of that said I have set out on journey to figure out just how we want to go about this and have come across things that I like and I have also created some things to help a long the way.

I really like this schedule (link below) because it allows you to adjust your reading to work for your family. There are chapters selected for younger families to read each month or you can read the entire Book of Mormon.

ALL OF THE BELOW LINKS DO NOT WORK IF YOU WOULD LIKE ME TO SEND THESE DOCUMENTS TO TOU PLEASE EMAIL ME AT becominglds@gmail.com AND I WILL SEND THEM TO YOU!!! Thanks!

I Will Read the Book of Mormon and Cutouts - A Yearly Book of Mormon Reading Schedule for Young Families

Next, I really want scripture time to be fun so I've create three lists to coordinate with songs from the Children's Songbook, pictures from the Gospel Art Kit, and the Book of Mormon Stories (you can download the video or text version of this online now). I hope that they will be helpful.

They should help in knowing when there are songs, pictures, or scripture stories to aid in your family scripture study. For example, when you hit 1 Nephi 3 you might look at the song list and know that you can use this song from the songbook - 1 Nephi 3:1-7 - Nephi's Courage - #120. The same thing goes for the two other lists. One day I may combine them into one document or grid to make planning easier until then the links to the current documents are below.

Children's Songbook Scripture Songs

Gospel Art Kit Scriptures

Book of Mormon Stories Scriptures by Chapter

ALL OF THE ABOVE LINKS DO NOT WORK IF YOU WOULD LIKE ME TO SEND THESE DOCUMENTS TO TOU PLEASE EMAIL ME AT becominglds@gmail.com AND I WILL SEND THEM TO YOU!!!  Thanks!

I haven't figured this all out yet but I plan to have certain days of the week be dedicated to certain things. For example, I may have a certain day of the week when we simply read, another day when we use a gospel art kit picture or if there isn't one we might draw a picture or color a picture printed off the the computer for that day, another day we might use the Book of Mormon Stories book or tell the story in more simple terms, ect. This way we really get to know the stories and have fun with it. I never want to use these activities to substitute for the actual words in the scriptures so each activity above will be used in conjunction with reading something from the scriptures for that day. If anyone already has a schedule that they have created or any fun ideas I would love to hear them.

I also found this link to a simple version of the Book of Mormon. It would be a great read for a young teen or anyone trying to understand the Book of Mormon better. http://www.plainbookofmormon.com/

Again, if anyone has any ideas on how to make Family Scripture Study with Young Children fun and understandable I would love to hear them. I hope the little bit that I have done might help some of you.