Family Scripture Study for 2022

 The Old Testament is long and sometimes hard to follow especially for children. So instead of trying to read the whole thing we are going to do an abridged, and simplified version.

I will tell them the story, using the cartoon version of the old testament that we have. The cartoon version tends to tell the stories as blandly as possible, so I will tell the stories directly. They also skip a lot, so I will read ahead and tell them interesting ones that were skipped using online artwork as a visual aid. I don't know if there are good videos for this, but I really liked Prince of Egypt and we'll give King of Dreams a try based on that.

We do want to do some reading of the direct words, which we will do two different ways: First, we'll read a verse or two for home-church. Second, we'll read these books: The book of Moses, the Book of Abraham, Deuteronomy, and Psalms. The books of Moses and Abraham are inspired and plain and in more modern language, like that of Doctrine and Covenants. Deuteronomy and Psalms are books that Christ quoted from, along with Isaiah. We're skipping Isaiah because we read a number of those chapters in the Book of Mormon last year and because it is usually over the kid's heads. Deuteronomy is the second law, and it goes over the Law of Moses from a more spiritual perspective, rather than a ritual or punishment perspective. Psalms is the Israelite hymns, compiled presumably starting with David. I get the sense some of them are quite old, probably tracing from originals that predated Abraham. I really like Psalms because as a missionary they taught me the language of prayer and faith. I was reading the Reina Valera, and the King James version of Psalms strikes me as overwordy and complicated. So for our Family Scripture study, we will use a different version, probably Robert Alters Psalms or the NIV. Or possibly I will do an English translation of the Reina Valera.

For the readings, I will read a line (from punctuation mark to punctuation mark, roughly), and have the kids repeat it. The reason for this is that it is too hard for most of my kids to read, but if I read it, they tend to zone out and not pay any attention. I can explain things after they repeat the line as needed. Our readers will have their own copy, so they can follow along and get familiar with the written word as well.

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