Lesson 1: Vision for Teaching Preschoolers
Welcome! This course has been arranged to equip, encourage, and guide teachers in using Truth78 materials. Take your time and glean helpful strategies for discipling effectively while using the gifts that God has given you to serve your church family.
Distinctive Vision for Preschool Curriculum
The approach used to acquaint young children with God’s Word in He Established a Testimony: Old Testament Stories and He Has Spoken by His Son: New Testament Stories is marked by four distinctions.
1. Comprehensive Approach Leading toward Teaching the Whole Counsel of God
Children love repetition. They love to hear their favorite stories over and over. Repeating the same Bible stories to a very young child is a good way for that child to remember and begin to understand those stories.
Although repetition is helpful, especially for toddlers, preschool children are often told the same stories over and over while vast portions of Scripture are overlooked. Though it is helpful for young children to hear the same stories repeated many times, it should not be to the exclusion of hearing other Bible stories. Sometimes, by the time a child reaches the age of five, he has heard the story of “Noah and the Ark” numerous times. But many other stories, such as the bronze serpent, an idol called Dagon, Ahab, Ananias and Sapphira, and Simon the magician have been hidden from them.
If “all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16), limiting the Scripture a child is exposed to can also limit his view of God. It is hard to truly conceive of the faithfulness of God unless you have seen His patience and mercy toward Israel time and time again. But if you have seen in story after story in which God forgives His people and calls them back to Himself even though they repeatedly reject Him, you begin to understand that God is a faithful God. When God is consistently shown as unchanging in many different stories, the impression is made that God never changes. Concepts such as these are much harder to grasp when children are exposed to a limited number of stories.
In using He Established a Testimony and He Has Spoken By His Son you will acquaint young children with 116 different Bible stories. This will give young children a fairly comprehensive knowledge of key Bible stories and prepare them to benefit from the other curricula in our scope and sequence. These two curricula, combined with the other Truth78 curricula, will give children an understanding of a vast number of Bible stories and Bible passages, a robust understanding of biblical doctrine, and a fairly comprehensive knowledge of God’s character.
Perhaps the most common criticism of teaching the “whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27) to young children is that some stories are not appropriate for children. Stories deemed inappropriate are those with content that is too mature for children (such as Potiphar’s wife’s attempt to seduce Joseph, or David’s adulterous affair with Bathsheba) or too violent for children (such as Israel’s annihilation of whole cities, including livestock, women, and children).
Rather than dismiss a whole story because of age-level inappropriate content, it is often possible that such content can be omitted from the story or tactfully presented. For example, in the case of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, the story could be told as, “Potiphar’s wife wanted Joseph to do something wrong.” David and Bathsheba can be presented as, “David saw Bathsheba and wanted her to be his wife instead of Uriah’s wife, so David brought Bathsheba to his palace and treated her like his wife instead of like a friend.” Omitting details often solves the problem of inappropriate content.
Fairy tales and other children’s stories are often wrought with violence. Red Riding Hood’s grandmother is eaten by a wolf, which is later chopped apart by a woodsman, and the three little pigs boil the wolf in a pot of water, and yet we tell these stories to children. In addition, children are exposed to vast quantities of graphic violence through the mass media. It seems more appropriate to limit this viewing than to limit exposure to the Bible due to violence. Screen violence is often senseless and motivated from a heart of hate or is shown as fun, as in cartoons.
On the other hand, the violence in the Bible (which can be told in a tactful rather than graphic way) is due to a holy God’s intolerance of evil. Violence in the Bible is always either the result of the consequences of sin or is shown as a sinful act. God’s judgment is never meted out arbitrarily but is always a just punishment. Children usually don’t have a problem with this because they have such a sense of fairness. In addition, it is not a bad thing for children to see the wrath of God and to gain a respect for the consequences of sin or to learn to loathe sin. It is a wonderful thing for them to see that often punishment was well-deserved, yet God extended mercy and forgiveness.
2. A God-Centered Emphasis
So often the Bible is used as a tool to teach children to be good little girls and boys, and the stories in the Bible are told with this framework in mind. The story of Moses in the bulrushes becomes a lesson on helpfulness: Miriam helped her mother by watching her baby brother in the Nile. David facing Goliath is an example of courage, and the feeding of the 5,000 becomes a lesson on sharing (e.g., “A Little Boy Shares His Lunch”). In addition, the lessons become very me-centered: God loves ME, God cares for ME, God provides for ME, God hears ME when I pray, and so forth. So often the attention is focused on man rather than on God.
The main purpose of the Bible is to instill faith by revealing the character of God. Rather than focusing on man and his needs, God is the main character in the Bible. Instead of Moses in the bulrushes being a lesson on helpfulness, it is in fact the story of our faithful God, in His love and compassion for Israel, honoring His promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to make of them a great nation, and rescuing Israel from slavery in Egypt. It is the story of our sovereign God imposing His will on Pharaoh and defeating Satan’s evil scheme by delivering His people with His mighty arm because He is all-powerful, He is faithful to His people, and He always accomplishes His purposes. It is the story of God showing Egypt that He is the LORD! (Exodus 7:1-5). In every Bible story we read (or tell), we should ask ourselves, “What does this say about God?” As we get to know God better through encountering Him in the Word and experiencing Him in daily life, faith grows. Good morals then grow out of an admiration for God’s character.
We tend to imitate those whom we admire. As we admire God’s character more, we have a greater sense of our own sinfulness and inability to live holy lives, which pushes us to repentance and dependency on God.
3. A Chronological Approach
The Bible is one continuous, interconnected story, not a collection of independent, individual stories. When stories are not told in relation to each other, the themes of Scripture, which are woven all through the Bible, are often missed. With a chronological approach, it is easier to see how everything fits together. The Moses in the bulrushes story is understood to be the same Moses who receives the Ten Commandments. David the shepherd boy grows up and becomes the king of Israel. As people are born and then die, as one king comes on the scene and then is removed, and as one situation arises and then is resolved leading to another, God is seen as the great constant in all of life. He is unchanging through all the years of biblical history. He is always present with His people. He is eternal, unlike everyone else. The Bible repeats the same themes over and over—it is the story of the character of God, and He never changes.
If a child hears merely a conglomeration of miracles and high adventure stories, it reduces the Bible to sounding mythical. Is it any easier to believe a story of a sea being split in half, a donkey speaking, or bread and fish multiplying than to believe a story of a child who meets a talking wolf on the way to grandmother’s house? Bible stories become believable as they are placed in the context of everyday life with the fabric of God’s character woven in and out of every event.
Not every study of the Bible needs to be chronological, but it is important to have a strong chronological foundation, especially for children, before branching off into topical studies. Once the character of God and the themes of the Bible are firmly established in a child’s mind, and hopefully in his heart, then other kinds of studies can be attempted because everything will then be understood in the context of the big picture. A study of the mercy of God cannot be fully understood or appreciated without first seeing how Israel continually rejected God and turned to idols, and how God repeatedly punished His people in order to bring them back to Himself and forgive their sins. When it is obvious to the reader of Scripture that man continually sins and is incapable of saving himself, God’s grace causes rejoicing and thanksgiving.
In order to stay true to the intent of Scripture, it is important to study a passage in context—not just its immediate context but also the foundation leading to it. A chronological approach shows the conclusion of a matter and therefore demonstrates that God’s way is always best. As the events and life stories of biblical characters unfold, the truth of Scripture is often driven into the heart as these histories and biographies come to a conclusion. The folly of Israel demanding a king and rejecting God’s kingship is fully realized by studying the life of Israel under the influence of its kings. The wisdom of God’s prohibition to intermarry with the heathen nations is obvious when we see how Solomon’s wives turned his heart from God. God is revered as a promise-keeper when we see the Messianic promises in the Old Testament being fulfilled in the person of Jesus, the Son of the living God.
Because Scripture progressively reveals who God is and how He works in our world, a chronological approach builds on elementary knowledge and understanding and matures faith step by step. Who would want to miss any part of this great story? Why approach the Bible haphazardly and run the risk of missing portions of God’s truth? Why settle for scattered pieces of this continuous story when such richness and depth of understanding and faith can be gained? Why see events and people when you can see the character and heart of the Almighty God?
Admittedly, the two studies—He Established a Testimony and He Has Spoken By His Son—are limited in their scope, and therefore cannot establish a complete chronology, but they are a good starting point for preschoolers and do establish at least a partial framework for understanding the Bible as a whole. Our recommendation is that this be followed up in the elementary years by reading More Than a Story: Old Testament and More Than a Story: New Testament (both published by Truth78.)
4. Emphasis on Teaching the Bible from the Heart Through Personal Study
The Bible is not just information that a child needs to know. It is the life-transforming, living Word of God, which can penetrate our children’s hearts with faith, conviction, comfort, encouragement, and wisdom. Though the work of true heart persuasion can only be accomplished by the Holy Spirit, we can be the means the Holy Spirit uses to impart the living Word of God, so it lands with power and influence. We need not be master teachers, but we must be people under the guidance of the Master. The Bible taught from a heart engaged in communion with and affection for God can be contagious. In order to teach from the heart, our hearts must first be moved upon by the Holy Spirit. Then we will be able to teach from the overflow of our own heart. Though the Holy Spirit can work through an unprepared heart, how much better it is to share from our own interaction with God through His Word.
For this reason, the stories in He Established a Testimony and He Has Spoken by His Son are not written out for the teacher to read to the children. Reading is not teaching, and parroting someone else’s words is not the same as telling a story you have studied, mulled over, prayed through, wrestled with, rejoiced in, marveled at, wept over, and been convicted by through God’s Word. Our goal is to instruct the mind, engage the heart, and influence the will of the child.
