The Bible - A book of Real Stories about Real People

Genealogy is not just a great way to look into your personal history. It is a great way to make the Bible real to children. So much of what children read is fiction, I’m not sure that they fully understand the truth in the Bible. Also, children can be very disconnected from the stories of the Bible as the stories occurred so long ago. When I taught 3rd grade, I liked to put up a family tree in the corner which we continued to add to as we read the Old Testament. The tree helped the kids to see that the Bible was a historical book. It helped them to see the chronological development and put one story in perspective to the next. It also helped to make the characters in the Bible personal to them.

I also found having maps and relating stories back to them helped achieve “realism” to the stories. Maps are real and concrete to children. To realize that these characters from so long ago walked in areas that still exist today, made the people more real and in some cases more understandable. Honestly, it wasn’t until I read “The Secret Magdalene” as an adult that I realized that when Jesus went into the wilderness that it wasn’t a wilderness of trees as I would think of it, but a desert wasteland. The more that we can connect the Bible to the children’s lives, the more they will be willing to continue to delve through the book looking for ways to apply The Word in their lives.