Bible and Character

Table of Contents

Over the years I have put together several forms and helps for our Bible time together, or for my children to use alone to facilitate their own Bible study. I share them with you with the prayer that they will also be a help and blessing to you.

Bible Reading and Study

I have used a variety of Bible study methods and curriculum with my children over the years, including the Bible studies that are sold on this site. For studying Bible together, my favorite method by far, is reading chapters of the Bible and discussing them together. This gives plenty of opportunity for personal application to specific things in each child's life, and growing together in the Word. The following worksheet is one we use while we're reading together to jot down important points from each chapter. I make one copy of the first page, and as many copies of the second page as necessary for whatever book of the Bible we are reading through.

Bible Reading Summary Sheet

As the children have grown older, however, I have wanted to help them gain skills in studying the Bible for themselves, doing exegesis of the passage (interpreting the text) and making personal application of the truths and principles found there. For that, I have developed some simple tools to help them. I have printed multiple copies of these worksheets and bound them together in a little 8.5 x 5.5 booklet for their use. Make a copy of the first sheet to do a summary of the book as a whole.

Book of the Bible Summary Sheet

Gospel Reading Worksheet

Epistle Reading Worksheet

Sometimes you need a study on something specific, don't you?  While your children may never need this Bible study on quarreling, mine need to do it about once a week!  I put together this worksheet so that the older children could do the study and apply it on their own.  

Study on Quarreling

Character Development

I know some people do character curriculum or training separately from Bible, but I feel like they are one and the same. Without a biblical basis, there is no character. What I desire is godly character in my children (and myself), and the Bible is the textbook for that training. The first link below is a list of character traits and definitions of them that I borrowed and compiled from other websites and modified for use with my children. We will use this list as a reference. Periodically, we'll go through the traits and evaluate ourselves on where we feel like we need to grow. I have also used this list for copywork.

Character Traits List

Another thing I've had my children do was read short biographies of Christians from the past and present and do a character profile on that person. For this activity, you could use the "Hero Tales" books (Volumes 1 - 4) by Dave and Neta Jackson, or for older kids, use "Ambassadors for Christ" by John Woodbridge. After reading each short biography, I have them fill out the following form for each person, learning from "the saints who have gone before us."

Character Profile

To have an individual child do a study on godly character traits that pertain to them, find Bible verses that talk about that character quality and have them look them up, write them out and illustrate them.  Here is a worksheet for girls.

Character Verses for Young Girls

Manners are another aspect of character training.  When I noticed that manners were starting to slide at our house, I made two charts to post in prominent places as a tool that we could refer to frequently.  

Table Manners

Manners with Others

Prayer

I think there are two ways to learn how to pray, and I believe that all of us need to become students of more effective prayer. While our Heavenly Father is completely pleased with any and all of our communication with him, just as a Mommy is completely thrilled with her toddler's early efforts to talk and the cute and funny things that he or she says with their limited vocabularly - eventually, we all need to grow up in our communication. The first way we learn to pray is to hear good models of prayer. These can be found by reading prayers in the Bible and the prayers of the saints of old. I highly recommend reading through prayer books that are many years old for good models. My favorite is "The Valley of Vision," a collection of Puritan prayers. The second method to learn better prayer communication habits is to practice them. Using tools that help us think more deeply can help.

Just as we need to grow in our prayer life, our children do too, and we are called to train them in this. So, first, we must model good prayer habits, as we are their primary source for imitation. Secondly, we can provide them with tools that will strengthen their prayer communication skills and help them go deeper than "Thank you for this day. Please help us have a good day in school today." Each day of our school week has a different prayer "focus." We rotate through; missionaries (we have a bulletin board in our school room with photos on it to choose from), unreached people groups, nations in conflict or crisis, the persecuted church (I print out Voice of the Martyrs weekly prayer requests and assign them out to each child) and personal requests. I have many tools that I've used with my kids over time (I try to change them periodically for effect). Here's one that contains many examples of good prayer ideas for the areas listed above. I compiled these off of various websites and some from my own ideas.

Prayer Guide