Never before have I dreamed of being able to memorize an entire book from the Bible. I mean, my memory is terrible, and I’m lucky if my kids remember what they learned in a day of school if I were to ask them. Home School Adventure Co. offers product to help families to teach their children a Biblical view of being compassionate, wise, and strong. In this day and age, it’s important to teach these qualities from a Christian standpoint.
For this review, we received the digital version of Philippians in 28 Weeks in the ESV (also available in KJV), which includes an e-book and printable memorization cards. The print edition retails for $28.95, or you can purchase each digital component separately. The e-book is $14.95, and the cards $9.95. The recommended age range is 9-11 aloud and family discussion, ages 12 and up as family discussion with parent/teacher guidance, and high schoolers should be able to do the work independently.
How It Works
The purpose of this Bible curriculum is, obviously, to memorize the entire book of Philippians in 28 weeks, or just over half a year. The book is a journal of sorts, and also has copywork sheets. The copywork is a great way to help with memorization and of course penmanship. The book is broken down into chapters. So, I’ll go over Chapter 1 a bit as an example, as that is the chapter that we worked on during our review period.
The first thing that should be done is to print the memorization cards and put them together. You’ll need to have these with you throughout the day. Then, you need to commit to reading the entire book of Philippians every day. Yes, I said every day. The chapter begins with the first week of copywork. The verses are broken down individually to be copied and studied over for the week. There are lines on the pages already for the verses to be copied onto, so there’s no need to have any extra pages other than what you print. The weeks verses should be memorized and studied upon daily. After the week’s verses, there is a page of questions called “Reflections” that are related to the verses that have been studied that week. Next is a journal page, with a question about what you’ve learned by reading Philippians that week. At the end of the week, you recite the verses that you have memorized to another person. In order to help retain what you’ve learned, you then recite the week’s verses at the beginning next week, and then start all over again, but with new verses each week. At the end of the chapter is a “Review & Recite” sheet. It has all of the verses that have been worked on for the whole chapter, and this way when the verses are recited at the end of each week, they can be graded or checked off if they’re are recited correctly. At the end of the book is a Log. This is handy to use to keep up with your progress. It allows you to track your reading of Philippians each day, as well as your verse reflection, repetition, and recitation.
How We Used It
I decided that we would incorporate Philippians in 28 Weeks into our Group Time around the table, where we work on subjects as a group effort. I printed off the cards and each week’s copywork sheets for my 3 oldest children (my youngest is 5, and isn’t nearly old enough for all the reading and writing that are involved). I read Philippians aloud to everyone myself, and the kids worked on their copywork pages. We worked on memorization/recitation bother together as a group and separately. It was a bit easier to have them recite to me, because if I had them recite to each other, they were more easily distracted. I will probably let them work together more with recitation as time passes.
What We Think of It
I personally love how this is broken down by week and chapters. For us, the pace is a bit too fast. In order to do the work as written, it would take up quite a bit of time during the day. I plan to continue with memorizing Philippians, but I definitely need to slow the pace down. It’s very involved and requires commitment. I think the program is a great idea to even get started with memorizing other books, or at least part of them since most are fairly large. The only thing I did not are for, is the print on the memorization cards is pretty small and hard to read. If you have a laminator, they are not so time-consuming to put together. Otherwise it takes quite a bit of time to put them together. The log sheet is nice to have, I love that it’s included in the book. The beauty of homeschooling is that you make most anything work for your school day, and I plan to make this work for our family. If your kids are older, it would be easier for them to work through the program at the pace as it’s written.
Stacy Farrell with Home School Adventure Co. has graciously offered a 10% discount for the downloadable products pictured in the graphic below. This offer expires May 15th.
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