We are responsible before God to teach our children to live and love the basic truths of Christianity. The primary place for this mission is the home. Let’s turn our homes into learning centers for God.

The Northern Light Home Learning Guide below is a partial resource for parents, grandparents, Sunday School teachers and others devoted to teaching our children the tenets of our faith. You can add or subtract from the suggested schedule below, but this guide will give you an excellent teaching template for zeroing in on key Bible themes and passages as your child grows. Our goal is to set long-term standards and chart strategies together for teaching our children to love God with understanding.

This Home Learning Guide is age-adjusted and designed to help you follow a program for training your children in the Lord. It is up to parents to devise strategies and programs that work best in their homes. Simplify or edit the learning schedule as needed according to the learning level of your children.

As a small boy, I learned to say, “supercali-fragilistic-expealidoscious” (from “Mary Poppins”) in no time flat. Try this: “Sticky sticky stombo, noso-rombo, hoddy-boddy-bosco-ikinon, uinon, romiton tombo!” I heard that a couple times and nearly fifty years later, it still rolls off my tongue with the greatest of ease.

In early times, children learned massive amounts of the Old and New Testaments by heart. Samuel Adams, an American founding father, knew the Lord’s Prayer at age two. Some ancient Greeks could sing the entire Iliad and/or Odyssey. Today, many Muslim children know the entire Qur’an. Can we do better with our children?

Timothy (who co-authored five books in the New Testament) was taught the Scriptures from “infancy” (2 Timothy 3:15). His mother Eunice and his grandmother Lois were his main teachers in the home (2 Timothy 1:5). We need more heroes like Eunice and Lois!

This learning guide contains a collection of core Bible passages for you and your child to learn by heart (most are from the New International Version). Let them learn the principles and stories of God’s Word at the same time. They need hands-on, face-to-face guidance from you. Create laminated flash-cards, refrigerator magnets and mirror-stickers from the Bible verses and items in this Home Learning Guide. Use family devotionals, Bible story times, songs and other projects. Sunday School teachers may also use this guide as a compliment to what our children are learning in the home.

This learning guide will not help your child unless its content comes to them through your heart and mind. Your task is to make the truths and stories of scripture come to life in your family devotions, bedtime moments, Sunday School classes or in any other teaching context you can create.

After that, this learning guide can re-enforce what those great stories teach. It will help you divvy them out to your child in a meaningful manner for maximum learning as long as they live under your roof.

Click on each theme-line below for more specific teaching content. This is intended to supplement many other resources for educating your child in our faith.

Homes with or without children can be learning centers for faith enrichment. Do you have a special place for prayer, Bible reading and personal study? Are you building resources in your home for spiritual growth? We hope this will help.

For the Future!

Joel Solliday, Minister

P.S. The Bible says, “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up... Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” Deuteronomy 6:6-9.