5 Tips for Reading Through the Bible with Your Kids

Reading through the Bible with your kids seems like a really big deal, doesn’t it?

I mean it’s a pretty big book with some tough stories and sometimes it’s hard to understand.

I want to encourage you that you can read through the Bible with your kids. Not only can you do it, it’s really important that you do, because they can understand the Bible. The Lord tells us in Scripture: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17, ESV)

5 Tips for Reading Through the Bible with Your Kids

In the last seven years, I’ve been honored to help tens of thousands of families read through the Bible together. Many times, it was the first time parents had read the Bible cover to cover themselves. Here are five quick tip to help you on your family journey through the Bible.

1) Read Through the Bible a Little at a Time

Yes, the Bible is a big book, but you’re not going to read it all at once. Get over your sense of overwhelm by reminding yourself that this is just like reading any other book with your kids. Remember that you don’t need to read through the Bible a little at a time. Soon you’ll find you’ve read through the entirety of God’s Word.

2) Be Consistent as You are Reading Through The Bible

Pick a consistent time to read the Bible with your kids. We like to read right after breakfast. That way, we catch everyone before they’re off doing their own thing, and after they’ve eaten. We also like to read the Bible together after dinner. By anchoring our Bible reading to an event we never forget each day–eating–we’re much more likely to succeed at daily reading.

3) Read the Bible Round Robin

Reading round robin is a great way to involve your kids in reading the Bible. It’s pretty simple: everyone takes a turn reading a paragraph until your reading for the day is done. We like to pause at the end of each chapter to discuss what we’ve read and read relevant sections of the Bible. (We use Bible Road Trip™ discussion questions.)

4) Skip Some Sections with Your Younger Kids

I want to give you permission to skip some of the really tough sections of the Bible with your younger kids. In the Bible Road Trip™ reading plan, students read more of the Bible as they go deeper at each level. When my kids were really young we didn’t read some of the more repetitive parts of Deuteronomy. Neither did we read the more horrifying stories in the Bible, like the ones that involved intimate assaults.

5) Use a Bible Reading Plan

Using a Bible reading plan makes reading through the Bible with your kids so much easier! I suggest you use one that offers discussion questions to help your kids with comprehension and retention.

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Pick up your free three-week Bible Road Trip™ Year One Sample Pack. You’ll receive three weeks of the curriculum–written at five levels for preschool through high school, three weeks of all three levels of the notebooking journals, and three weeks of all five levels of the Bible memory verse cards–in both ESV and KJV.

Danika Cooley is a children’s author and curriculum developer. Her work includes Bible Road Trip™, When Lightning Struck!: The Story of Martin Luther, and Wonderfully Made: God’s Story of Life from Conception to Birth. You can find her over at ThinkingKidsBlog.org.