Teaching our children to love the scriptures!

I'm so excited that I wanted to share this idea in case it helps someone else. If you don't mind, let me indulge myself...

I don't know if your family is like mine, but sometimes we struggle to teach the scriptures to our kids.  For example, we started from the beginning on the Book of Mormon two years ago and we are just barely finishing 2 Nephi.  However, we read each night, but with our young kids we usually just read a column because it is a very long process to give all of our beginning readers a chance to read. The kids were on fire when we read about Nephi building the boat, Nephi getting the brass plates and so on.  But then we hit Isaiah... and well, the children lost interest and scripture study became something we checked off.

Last night I was flipping through the Ensign.  One of the very first articles is about how we can teach our children to love the scriptures. I looked at the picture. Read the caption. Then read the first paragraph.  And, BAM! It hit me. I've yet to finish the article. ...An idea came to me to improve our family's scripture study and I put down the Ensign to start working on my idea.   I was so excited about it last night that I couldn't sleep. I want to throw it out there for all of the families who have young children and might be feeling like we were.  This is just an idea. There are so many GREAT ideas out there. Take this as you want.

So here is my new plan of action:

I am going to buy each of my children there own copy of the Book of Mormon Stories manual for $6.50 from the Distribution Center. There are 54 stories from the B of M in it. Basically, that is one story per week of the year. Instead of reading every word from the B of M from beginning to end (and struggle through several chapters of Isaiah) we are going to read 1 story per week starting from the beginning of the Book of Mormon Stories manual. I think this will work great while my kids are young.  They will really learn the stories.  And as they mature and grow older, we will read from the very beginning of the Book or Mormon and read every word. 

BUT, I don't want to lose the importance of reading straight from the scriptures as well. So here is my complete (and flexible) plan.

In one week our family will TRY to:

First night: read the story from the Book of Mormon Stories manual.

Second and third night: read the same story from our real Book of Mormons.

Fourth night: I'm going to buy pencils to mark our scriptures and the cute pictures from Deseret that you can stick on the pages. We will go through the story in our real scriptures and mark important verses and cross reference scriptures.

Fifth night: act out the story or watch the Living scripture video of the story or whatever, we will try to get creative

Sixth night: Have each of the children write/draw how they feel / what they learned / what touched them...etc. in their own scripture journal. President Lewis encouraged us to teach, even our young children, the importance of keeping a study journal. A simple notebook will work great.

(Notice there is no 7th night... I'm being realistic!) Just come up with your own schedule.

I am excited because I think my kids will really learn the stories, learn how to study the scriptures instead of just reading them, and will hopefully grow to love the scriptures. This is a great year to dive into the Book of Mormon because that is what we are also studying in church. This concept of scripture study shouldn't take any longer either. It is just more comprehensive and focuses on what our children will love and remember.

Like I said, this is just an idea. I am sure the Boyles are far behind everyone else. There are so many great ways to teach our children, please share more ideas of what you do; I'd love to know!