How We Do Family Scripture Study

Bart and I both grew up in families that did daily family scripture study and we knew we wanted to do the same with our own children.

It’s changed over the years as we’ve added more children to our family and our kids have gotten older.

Currently, we have children ages almost 6 to 12.

For me, my main goals for family scripture study are to make it simple enough that we can be consistent with it and also that it’s an enjoyable, happy experience for everyone (at least most of the time – there’s basically nothing you can do as a family that six people will like every single time, even dessert!).

We aim for about 5-10 minutes a night so that it doesn’t feel overwhelming and we do it six days a week (on Sundays, we have Family Home Evening or Monthly Meetings).

Here’s what scripture study looks like at our house right now:

(But first a few quick notes about our family scripture study)

• We follow the Come Follow Me curriculum – this year we’re doing the New Testament
• I like to make sure each of my girls has their own copy of the book of scripture we’re reading that year. Then they can follow along on their own and mark them up. (I like these mini versions because they’re easy to store and also really inexpensive).
• We almost always do family scripture study in the basement playroom after dinner, when the girls are in pajamas and ready for bed. After scriptures, I’ll read aloud to them from our current read-aloud book. Sometimes, if we have things in the evening, we’ll do scripture study over dinner instead and if we’re out late for something, we’ll do it in the car on the way home.
• It’s very important for me to make scripture study manageable. I’m not interested in a bunch of props or materials – I know myself well enough to know that I could NEVER keep that up.

On Monday, we start out the week with watching the week’s episode of Drawn In – my sister Merrick introduced us to this last summer and we immediately bought our own subscription. It’s really well done and incredibly fun even for the adults – as a content creator, I’m FLOORED by how much effort he puts into it. (You can try it out for free here and use the code JANSSEN for a discount if you decide to subscribe).

It’s also a great overview for what we’re studying that week and starts out the week strong. If the episode is longer than about 15 minutes, we’ll usually break it into two days and watch the second half on Tuesday.

(I also always finish folding any laundry while we watch on Monday because Monday is my laundry day and this is a great time for me to finish it up so I can get it done all in one day).

Prior to Drawn In, we’d watch the weekly Latter Day Kids video on Monday (free on YouTube), but they were definitely a little juvenile for our two older girls. If you have younger kids, definitely check them out.

At the beginning of the week, I make assignments from the Come Follow Me manual (which is broken into small sections for each week) and each of the girls leads the discussion one day. This is not anything big or stressful – usually they read aloud the little paragraph, ask a few questions, have us read a couple of verses, and then we chat about it for a few minutes. For the two little girls, one of the parents will help if they want help.

On Saturday, Bart does a little review of what we’ve studied that week, often with a little quiz, fill in the blank questions, or game (a popular one is where we put hula hoops on the floor and they stood on the couch and jumped into their hula hoop if they knew the answer).

We also sometimes sing scripture verses set to music to help us memorize them and we’ll do a few of those as practice.

If you have any questions about how we do our family scripture study or suggestions for what’s worked for your family, I’d love to hear!

if you like liked this post about our family scripture study, you might like these other posts:

• 20+ Fun Activities for Kids While They Listen to Audiobooks
• All about the new Kids Kindle
• 39 book recommendations if you’re getting back into reading

Photos by Heather Mildenstein