Probably one of the top 10 misunderstandings of the “Better Late than Early” philosophy is that if you aren’t “doing school” (ie. traditional academics) with your young children then you aren’t teaching them anything. We all know that nothing is further from the truth.
One aspect that we highly focus on during these years (anywhere from toddler to preteen) is character development. One excellent tool we can use as part of our “character curriculum” that also covers “doing school” is the reading aloud of biographies of those of great Christian character. We have and use several resources for this.
One of our favorites for the younger crowd is the 3 book series of _Hero Tales_. In these books are short stories from the lives of several “famous” Christians – 3 stories per person. These are by Dave and Neta Jackson, the authors of the Trailblazers series – which are also excellent stories of missionaries’ lives, though told through a fictional story. For the little bit older children (and adults :-), the new _Then and Now_ series of Christian biographies by Janet and Geoff Benge is excellent. Although these are all “Christian” series, probably our favorite of the full length biographies for children is the Mott Media’s _Sower series_ ; as they have the most info about the Christian character of the person.
The stories in _Hero Tales_ are short enough that you can finish them in one setting with little ones. After reading and narrating a story, we discuss what godly character was in the life of the person and how we can be like them. This is just one tool we can to help our children develop godly charater in their lives.
If you are interested in any of the above books, you can order them through Me and My House ministries – by using our partners links in our sidebar.
