Introducing Kids to the Bible
Left to himself, a child will randomly open the Bible and read something—usually Genesis. Without some guidance, he may not learn much that he can apply to his life. Let’s have a strategy for helping kids get acquainted with their Bibles and understand how to read and apply it. The first step is basic acquaintance.
While it may be common knowledge that we should teach children from the Bible, many don’t realize we need to teach children about the Bible itself. Kids don’t know basic concepts of how the Bible is set up, or what the different sections of the Bible teach. However, you can easily teach these things to kids.
Having a visual representation of the different sections of the Bible as you teach them can be helpful for giving kids a survey of the whole Bible. One way you can do this is by taking cereal boxes of identical size, take them apart, turn them inside out, close them up again, and decorate each one to look like a book, representing the sections of the Bible. There are five sections of the Old Testament. They are titled Law, History, Wise Poetry, Major Prophets, and Minor Prophets. Then there are five sections for the New Testament titled Gospels, Church History, Paul’s Letters, Other Letters, and Prophecy. This is a great way to give kids a survey of the whole Bible. You can study each section and put pictures in the box to represent the books or stories for that section of the Bible.
Give children an overall view of why the Bible is special and by far the most important book in the world. Explain that no other book in the world has been preserved even close to this well with many old manuscripts, so that in itself is a miracle. Explain that no other book in history has made hundreds of prophecies that have come true, with not a single one wrong, and no other book has demonstrated the same power to change lives with its truth. Describe how God tells us about Himself in the Bible so we can know Him, and that is the most wonderful thing in all of life. This overall view and excitement for God’s Word needs to permeate every lesson so children want to discover more about it.
Explain to kids that the Bible teaches both what happened in the past and what will happen in the future. You can use a Bible timeline to show this. A beautiful timeline poster can be had for just $5 from CEFPress.com. A timeline should start with Creation, show key moments in the Old Testament, go through the life of Christ and the expansion of the Church, and end with the return of Jesus. Every time you read a Bible story, you can point to where it would be on the timeline and help kids with their sense of chronological order and how everything fits together.
Help kids learn to navigate the Bible by showing them the Old and New Testaments and the Table of Contents. Explain that the Old Testament tells about how the Savior, Jesus, would come, and the New Testament tells how the Savior came, about His life, what happened after He died and rose again, and what will happen still in the future.
You can provide children with a bookmark with the books of the Bible on it. CEF Press.com has one with the books of the Old Testament on one side and New Testament on the other grouped in the divisions I spoke of.
Explain that each verse has a reference, or address, to help them find it. Just like their home address starts big with the city, narrows it down to the street, and then the house number, a Bible reference has a book, chapter, and verse. Allow time for kids to practice finding different verses so they can start to become comfortable with how the Bible is set up.
This may seem like basic information, but many children know none of it. 
Also provide kids with a children’s devotional booklet to help them apply what they are reading to their lives. Devotional booklets for different comprehension levels can be found at cefpress.com.
The most important gift you can give to a child under your guidance is a love for God’s Word and the wisdom to treasure it far above anything else in life. If you want to reference what I talked about today, see the article about helping kids get acquainted with the Bible at cefonline.com.