Judah Bible Curriculum Review: Concept More Than Curriculum

     For the last six weeks or so, our family has been using and reviewing the Judah Bible Curriculum program.

     While some curriculum programs take a bit more time for me to comprehend and understand than others, I eventually grasp the whole point of the curriculum and can justify its expense and the effort it took to understand the program.

     Every once in a while, though, a review product throws me for a loop.

     Judah Bible Curriculum has been one of those programs that leaves me with a head full of question marks.  But that's not all bad.

     Now to be fair to Judah Bible Curriculum, this program uses an approach to teaching that wasn't familiar to me.

     I'd heard of The Principle Approach quite a few years ago, when my girls were babies.  But I hadn't seen it in action, nor had I ever worked with any curriculum that used The Principle Approach...or so I thought.

     The Principle Approach, in general, is not a method where the parent or teacher will be able to open up the teacher's guide to Page 1 and launch into the material with the student.  It will take some teacher/parent training to put this program into action.

     The Principle Approach is being aware of the providential hand of God in history and the lives of each of us individually, and the character trait of self-government, which is simply submitting to the sovereignty of God. There is a component of Christian character and national liberty as well, but the main idea is that we must learn to govern ourselves because we are submitting to God when we do so and that God's providential hand is all over history.   --quote from fellow TOS Crew member in summarizing The Principle Approach for those of us who were not familiar with it

Judah Bible Curriculum:  What does it include?

     As a member of the TOS Homeschool Crew, I was selected to review the online/download version of Judah Bible Curriculum.  I received a 100-page K-12 Manual download as well as 8 hours of audio lessons in mp3 format. 

     In general, the download/online version costs $44 and contains:

    1) Judah Bible Curriculum K-12 Manual, e-book format to download;
    2) Elementary Notebook Ideas booklet to view online or download;
    3) Eight-lecture Teacher Training Seminar. listen online or download.

The hard copy version costs $69 plus $5 shipping & handling, and includes:

    1) Judah Bible Curriculum K-12 Manual;
    2) Elementary Notebook Ideas booklet;
    3) Eight-lecture Teacher Training Seminar on CDs.

How do I use Judah Bible Curriculum with my family?

     This is where I initially struggled to figure out how to use this program (um, ur, I mean, "concept") with my family.  The K-12 manual is basically an outline that provides lists of Scripture passages and their key themes for each grade level.  I was hoping that I'd receive lesson plans or lesson outlines and activities for each grade level, but this program isn't designed to do that for the parent or teacher. 

     To begin with, I read through the K-12 Manual, all 100 pages of it.  Next, I began listening to the mp3 lessons online.  Then, still not sure how to start, I read through the manual again.  Next, I read through the Judah Bible Curriculum's website tab "Teacher Walkthrough" for registered, paid users of this curriculum, and I printed anything I felt would help us out.

     After going through all of the "Teacher Walkthrough" materials, I still felt like I was missing something important about how to use this program with our family.

     I finally took the printed materials to my husband, who leads our family Bible studies together, and asked him what he thought.  He noticed the Lesson 1 printouts from the "Teacher Walkthrough" and decided that we would just start there!  (Duh.)  So, we did.

     I think what was confusing me was that the manual mentioned doing extensive writing activities, notebooking and journaling, coloring sheets, hands-on activities, and tests - but none of these are provided in the program itself.  I kept thinking that I had somehow forgotten to print out a huge section of the program, even though I had searched their website for quite some time and didn't see anything that I had missed.

     The program does include some samples of student key sheets that have been filled out, as well as a few journaling/coloring sheet ideas for a few of the "lessons."

So, what's the point?

     Judah Bible Curriculum, using The Principle Approach, is designed to teach the parent a different method of studying the Bible instead of being spoonfed by an author's lesson plans.  The parents will direct the reading of the Bible passage, and then the family will discuss questions they have about the passage.  Children will basically become "research assistants", looking up information about the culture and practices of the people they are reading about...or using commentaries and other Bible handbooks to answer questions. 

     Parents should spend several hours each week in private preparation time, to study the specific Bible passages and gain an understanding on what God wants them to show their children through the Scripture readings.

     Parents should also be praying for guidance on how the Lord wants them to construct activities and writing exercises to solidify the material that has been read and discussed.  This is the key reason that Judah Bible Curriculum is actually more of an outline instead of an actual curriculum. 

How should Judah Bible Curriculum be used with young children?

     The outline in Judah Bible Curriculum lends itself well to being used with young children.  However, this is going to take a concerted effort on the part of the parent to come up with activities to enhance the Bible readings.  If parents want coloring pages to be used with the reading, they'll need to find these online on their own.  If hands-on activities are desired for a reading time, they will need to find these or think of them on their own.

     When our girls were much younger, ages 4 and 6, we began a biblically-based chronological history program.  The lessons contained no color pictures, and only a few black-and-white pictures, so I began filling a 3" notebook binder with pictures, activities, website links, and all kinds of fun things to be used with each lesson.  After all, the girls were young and needed some kind of "active" outlet to help the historical concepts stick in their minds.  While this worked well for us, I literally spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours working on this for one volume of our history text over the next two years.  I loved doing this - but it was extremely time-consuming.  If we were using Judah Bible Curriculum with small children, I would do much the same.  My husband, with his work/home/ministry responsibilities, would not have time to do this for us, so it would be up to me to enhance the Scripture readings every week.

     And that is one of the downfalls to this curriculum, we thought.  My husband likes providing the biblical lessons for our family, but if I was the one doing so much preparation for each week's lessons, then the leadership would fall more on my shoulders, which is something we are trying to avoid with Bible lessons in our home.

     There was one page in the guide that mentioned the 4 main concepts we were to focus on as we study.  They are:

1. The hand of God in History
2. The hand of God in the life of the individual
3. Christian self-government
4. Individual Christian character and national liberty.

How do we use this with junior high students?

     I think the other reason I felt confused with Judah Bible Curriculum is because I realized that this is the way we have studied the Bible and history over the years.  While we may have used Bible study books and lessons along the way, we have always gone deeper than most of the Bible study helps and lessons have asked us to go.  We ask a lot of questions.  We discuss the passages in detail.  And sometimes, we do fun activities to accompany the lessons.

     So, we did the same thing with Judah Bible Curriculum.  We started in Genesis 1, following the manual outline, and discussed passages from Genesis 1 and 2.  The girls had some great questions, and we talked quite a bit about God's creation, even though this is something we have extensively studied in the past.

     Each age level in the manual begins with the theme of Creation in the first weeks of their Bible study with Judah Bible Curriculum.  Different passages are read depending on the age and year of the children. 

     Obviously, we didn't make our junior highers color in coloring pages, or any younger level activities, although they would have had some silly fun with some of the ideas abounding on the internet!

     There were a few key sheets to be used with Judah Bible Curriculum, to fill out the key people, key governments, etc.  in the readings.  We discussed these multiple times.  Basically, we followed a simple pattern of prayer, reading the appropriate Bible verses, discussing questions we had with the passage, and filling out or talking about the key sheets. 

What was our overall opinion of Judah Bible Curriculum?

     The audio lessons for the parent can be challenging to download depending on your internet speed and capacity for downloads. It might be better for purchasers of this program to listen to the audios on the website itself instead of downloading them to a personal computer, if you think you will have slow or spotty internet service, or if your download times are limited each month.  There are 8 hours of audio, which is a lot!  My only time to listen quietly to audios without being interrupted is late at night, which means that my brain doesn't comprehend things as well as it should...because I'm too tired!  I would prefer that the audio lessons for the parents also be written for the parent to read, especially if a parent has a difficult time learning something new via the auditory senses.

     Sometimes during the audio mp3 lectures, the lecturer would say, "Now look over here on your right," but there would be nothing for me to see.  While a few visuals from the mp3 lessons are contained in the teacher manual, most of them aren't.  It was harder to follow along like I wanted to, although I suppose that if I'd had enough coffee that evening, I could have done better, right?    :)

      Most importantly, while I understand the basics of The Principle Approach, it can be a very time-consuming process and preparation for the parent.  I prefer a curriculum that has many activities and projects already suggested for the parent, and included in the program itself.  Then, if a parent feels he should do something different, he is using wisdom from God to pick and choose what he wants his children to do at the same time as Bible study.  And if a parent has extremely limited time and resources, there will be enough in the Judah Bible Curriculum to help the parent work through Bible chapters with their children.  Most homeschooling families are already accustomed to tweaking a program for their family's use, in the way that God is leading them, so this would be nothing new to them.

The final word about Judah Bible Curriculum:

     I feel like our family has thoroughly explored the Judah Bible Curriculum, both online at their website and in the materials I was able to print out.  However, I still feel like I'm missing something...even though I'm pretty sure I'm not!  The lectures are beneficial to the parent, and the outline is generally helpful, but for the price of the program, I'm not seeing the full benefit.  Yes, the Principle Approach is a helpful learning tool, but since I view this program more as a concept for the parent vs. a curriculum, I think purchasers will need to keep in mind that they are paying for "teacher training" vs. an active, hands-on program that they can immediately use with their families. 

     Since we've basically been using the Principle Approach when we work on Bible lessons or history lessons over the years, this really wasn't anything new to my family.  Maybe we didn't know we were using the Principle Approach, but we were.  And that was the biggest surprise of all, for me.  But I'm not sure I would have paid money to learn how to teach with this method since I could have researched it on my own for free on the internet.

     Judah Bible Curriculum does have validity.  It's just not what I expected it to be - and parents need to realize that this is a parent training tool instead of a ready-to-go curriculum.

     You may view a sample of their curriculum to see what you think of it!  To learn what other TOS Crew families thought of Judah Bible Curriculum, click here.

 




Julieanne
Joy In Our Journey.com

Disclaimer:  As a member of the TOS Homeschool Crew, I received one copy of the the download/online version of Judah Bible Curriculum in exchange for my honest review of this program.  No other compensation was provided. 

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