BSGFAA Vol 4--lesson length

[silver]

I'm planning out our school year for next year. I'm trying to figure out how I want to do Bible. I know I want to cover the prophets, and I thought I would look through BSGFAA, since I already own the teacher's guide for volume 4 and that volume covers many of the prophets. But then I'm flipping through the lessons and wondering at the feasibility of them. One lesson (#405) lists the text to read as both Lamentations and Ezekiel! My audio Bible lists Ezekiel as being almost 4.5 hours to read aloud. And that is only part of the reading for a single lesson??

 

So... Is this typical? How is the average lesson length in BSGFAA if you read from the Bible for the lessons? Are they somehow shorter if you do the student pages instead of the teacher's guide?

 

Any other resources for teaching the OT prophets to grammar stage kids?

[lexi]

Well I used the student pages with that level last year. We didn't read entire books for a lesson. I can't even imagine doing that.

From what I remember the lessons did skip around some through the books because I know I didn't read every single chapter. It felt more like an overview. I wish I still had the student pages to look through.

[silver]

Do the student pages have smaller portions of the reading? Or do they paraphrase/summarize the readings so that two entire books could be done in a single lesson?

[lanabug]

The lessons will tell you which verses to read in order to do the worksheet. Occasionally it will add a note to the teacher to paraphrase a longer passage.  We'll be doing Volume 4 next year, but up to this point, we haven't had any lesson take longer than 20-30 minutes.

 

Lana

[Freedom]

I am looking at lesson 405...the Primary student teacher guide. It summarizes both books enough for younger ones to understand. For example, "Ezekiel spoke God's words and said, "Jerusalem and the other towns of Judah will be destroyed and their idols smashed!"" This was only 1 of 8 parts to the lesson's story sheet.

 

I've always used the student pages and the summaries are great for elementary kids. DS has learned so much!

[lexi]

The lessons will tell you which verses to read in order to do the worksheet. Occasionally it will add a note to the teacher to paraphrase a longer passage. We'll be doing Volume 4 next year, but up to this point, we haven't had any lesson take longer than 20-30 minutes.

 

Lana

This. The beginner pages have summaries as well.

The intermediate pages have the list of verses to read. I find that it's broken up fairly well.

And I agree-no lesson has taken over 20 minutes or so.

Edited February 13, 2016 by lexi

[silver]

Thanks. It makes a lot more sense. I did not realize that the student pages are meant to be more of a survey/overview of the Bible. I only own a Teacher Guide (but I've obviously not used it), and it seemed more like we were going to be reading most (if not all) of the Bible. The teacher guide doesn't indicate that only a portion would be read. And although the visuals in the Teacher's Guide seem to roughly line up with the "Discover the Bible" portion of the student pages, the Teacher Guide visuals don't have scripture references listed for each "scene".

[cmarango]

I found the teacher guide overwhelming for me as it's not nearly as easy to use as the student pages are and requires more teacher prep work in my opinion.  The flipping back and forth between lessons and what I should use for review questions was more than I wanted.  And, the thought of trying to draw out my own lessons was too much for me.  

 

The student pages are super easy to use.  Each lesson has it's own sheet and at the primary level the story on the page is all that you need.  I began by reading our Bible and then doing the worksheet, but after a few weeks I stopped reading from our Bible because it was too repetitive and my son's attention began to wander.  Both of my children really loved the program, but this year we are just reading through the Bible a little bit each day because I did not enjoy jumping around so much.  We still use the Bible cards and the music CD from the program though, and I do miss the review questions/memory work that BSGFAA provided.