I was immediately drawn to the title of the family Bible studies offered by Real Life Press, written by Heidi St. John. The name Firmly Planted draws quite close to my heart, as this blog was founded on the concept of growing where we are planted. Psalm 1:3 is the key verse for this set of Bible studies: Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord; he is like a tree, firmly planted by streams of water who yields its fruit in due season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers. Yep, I was immediately hooked. 🙂
For this review, our family was given a complete set of Firmly Planted, The Gospels Part 2: Stories from the Life of Jesus. This includes the Family Study Guide and the Student Workbook. You can get them as a PDF download or as a black-and-white print set, depending on which format works best for your family.
This is such a great study! Each week of the 10-week study sets up with the scripture passage that will be studied throughout the entire week, plus a specific verse/passage for students to memorize, the main idea for the week, and extra explanation and activities to enhance the lessons. After the weekly overview, there are daily studies for each day through the week, which help to direct the topic of conversation to a different learning moment each day. The Student Workbook is INCREDIBLE! There are so many activity options, including nature studies, crosswords and word searches (with choices for younger or older students), coloring pages, mazes (with choices for younger or older students), copywork, journal & drawing pages, vocabulary lessons, fill-in-the-blanks, plus special digging deeper sections for your oldest student(s).
Here’s one lesson from Week 3: Jesus and Zaccheus as an example of how we are using Firmly Planted, The Gospels Part 2:
First, we learned the Zaccheus song. You remember… “Zaccheus was a wee little man and a wee little man was he.” 🙂 Music really helps kids remember concepts. After the song, Josh and Katherine climbed up in our tree to understand more about what Zaccheus may have felt like, wanting to see Jesus over all of those tall people!
Next, we read through the scripture passage and talked about the meaning, the main idea of how Jesus has compassion on all of us… The kids then got to do some “fun” work, reinforcing what we learned. Here is Katherine working on the Maze for Younger Ones.
And Joshua doing his coloring page…
I helped him do the Crossword Puzzle for Younger Ones because he’s not writing yet, but he got most of the answers right when I asked him!
Here is Katherine working on the copywork that goes with the lesson…
These few activities are really just a sampling of what’s included in the 259-page Student Workbook. It is so comprehensive and I think using a variety of activities helps kids retain so well!
Here are a few of the other products offered by Real Life Press, including more Bible studies plus homeschooling help books, that you may want to check out:
So what do we think of Firmly Planted, The Gospels Part 2?
We love it! I highly recommend this study for homeschooling AND non-homeschooling families. It is a great, short, comprehensive daily study that can be used by families with kids of all ages. There are so many different pieces. You can choose to use what you want, and not use others. Everything is broken down for you in a very easy-to-understand and easy-to-teach fashion. This is definitely one to check out for your next family Bible study!
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