The Toddler's Bible

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Would you think I was crazy if I told you that I didn’t know how to the Bible “fit” together until I was in college and began an in-depth Bible study? I didn’t realize that all of the individual stories I learned about in Bible Class (which I went to since I was a baby) all told about the same people, God’s chosen nation of Israel. Nor did I realize just how much the Old Testament pointed to the coming of our Savior in the New Testament. Thankfully, my children will not have this void in their faith walk with the prevalence of children’s bibles that tell the story of Jesus literally from the beginning. This children’s Bible story book is different than the other two recommended for babies in that it includes actions! The stories are simple and short and include at least three actions with every story ( roar like a lion, pretend you are hammering, etc), making it perfect for babies 6 months and older. This was both of my boys’ favorite children’s bible well into toddlerhood! There are also gender-specific versions of the Baby Bible for boys and girls (although some of the stories are the same). If we aren’t given a full picture of God’s character and if our Bibles don’t talk about sin and we are never confronted with our sin, we will never recognize our need for a Savior!

We continue to revisit our favorite Bible storybooks even as the kids grow (and especially because we have multiple ages in our family), but we transition the kids into a full-text Bible of their own around 6 years old. Sometime between six and eight years old also tends to be the time we begin helping the kids develop their own quiet time, so having their own Bible isn’t only important but exciting too. The Jesus Storybook Bible— For ages 5+ This book is a tear-jerker (for adults, anyway). Ronnie learns about Jesus’ great sacrifice in Sunday School and wants to give Jesus a gift. He tries to mail Jesus his coveted baseball glove, but the post office doesn’t mail to Heaven. On his way home, he sees a man who is hungry and uses the money he brought for postage to buy the man a hot dog. Later on, he is jumping on his trampoline, trying to reach Heaven, when he sees his lonely neighbor boy over the fence. He asks his neighbor to jump on the trampoline with him. Finally, he buys a big balloon to use to fly his baseball glove to Jesus only to hear a little girl crying because her balloon floated away. Ronnie gives the little girl his balloon, but then feels badly because he didn’t give a gift to Jesus. That night he has a dream where Jesus tells him that when he gave the food to the hungry man, his time to his neighbor, and the balloon to the sad little girl, Ronnie was giving a gift to him. What is your family’s favorite children’s Bible? My preschoolers have loved this Bible, and the bonus is the audio CDs, so the kids can listen to the story as they read. We love that it emphasizes the Bible as one big story with Jesus at the center, and the stories are told simply enough for preschoolers to understand and remember. Even though babies will not understand or retain the baby Bible stories you read to them, I believe it is important for Christian families to make reading a Bible story a habit within days of welcoming your baby home. Here are just a few of our favorite bible story books for newborns through to early toddlers.

Through interactive adventures and beautiful animations, kids explore the big stories of the Bible. The Bible App for Kids is a delight-filled experience designed to encourage kids to return again and again. It’s the beginning of a lifelong love of God’s Word. This classic story Bible includes 200 retellings of Bible stories in language kids can understand but that also stays true to Scripture. This is a Bible that has been used, loved, and recommended for over 80 years! However, my current toddler totally latched onto it being “his” Bible and he loves it. And, I’ve learned to appreciate it too. It’s a classic for a reason and it does have some really good things going for it. My top two are that the stories are kept short and simple and I love that it has SO MANY stories to choose from that other toddler Bibles skip. So if the children of the Bible die all the time, where do we see God enabling children to be saved for life? Brueggeman finds a third metaphor in the idea of the courageous midwives who risk everything defying Pharaoh by saving rather than killing the firstborn Hebrew children. 5 Midwives oversee births, watching over them and bringing children safely into our world. So God, too, is the caring midwife of all of us, guiding us through our lives, making it possible to respond to our personal calling to be human with a ‘yes’ to God of our own volition. All of my kids have loved reading these volumes over and over again. The pictures are a little different and keep the kids’ attention, and all of the stories emphasize God as the hero. The Big Picture Story Bible – For ages: 2-7

Also, it is important to remember that each of these children’s Bible is someone’s interpretation. I am thankful for these interpretations, however, because they help my little ones yearn to grow closer and know God more from a younger age. They take the Bible and make it accessible and developmentally-appropriate for even the tiniest of children. The Best Children’s Bibles Baby Bible Well, besides the fact that toddlers are just energy filled and unpredictable, it could be that the children’s Bible you were using was not the best choice to use as a toddler Bible. There are a lot of great Bible storybooks out there that are better saved for kids who are a little bit older, have longer attention spans, and have moved past the tendency to use the couch as a jungle gym during story time. What makes a great toddler Bible? That's why I've created a collection of fun and educational activities inspired by stories and teachings from the Bible and it's also why I enlisted the help of my sister-in-law, Sharla to help share her insights. She is a woman of confident and compassionate faith -- a trait I admire. These insights from Scripture tell us that God is deeply and intimately involved in our growth and development before as well as after birth. From their earliest moments unborn children are subject to God’s call to be and to become. They respond in precisely one way – they grow and develop. This tells us something very important. God’s call to children is first to grow as human beings. Their growth in the womb and after birth is a response to a continued calling. God calls us to this human development in body, mind and spirit right through our lives, however long or short, until at the end we are called out of life into God’s eternal presence. This means God’s call is just the same and just as relevant if babies have disabilities or if they do not make it to birth. There are no failures because every human person is ‘known’. Every child is precious before God and subject to exactly the same call.Two of my kids were early readers, and two began reading independently a little later. Consider your child’s reading level when choosing a Bible for your kids to read independently. If the reading part is a challenge, it is more likely they will resist reading the Bible. We want to help make their Bible time as accessible and inviting as possible.

When your child is as young a toddler (or a baby) it’s a smart idea to have a variety of different Bibles for a few different reasons. W Brueggemann, ‘Vulnerable Children, Divine Passion and Human Obligation’, in M Bunge, The Child in the Bible (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), pp. 399–422. The Bible App requests access to a device's account list to aid in sending Push Notifications to older versions of Android. But when kids are young toddlers, they still have quite short attention spans. So while reading to them from the family Bible is very important, it’s also good to get the stories and concepts into their little minds using Bibles geared towards their age level. And we are very blessed that there are so many great resources out there to help. Finally, a little bit of action goes a long way. God created light? Close your eyes tight and then open them wide. Jonah in the belly of the fish? Pretend to swim. Daniel in the lion’s den? Roar!

These are really fun and engaging for toddlers and even though the stories are very short (a few sentences) and don’t have very much depth, they help to keep toddlers interested and still teach them about key concepts that happen within each Bible story. For our family Bible time, we pull from all of the Bibles below for different seasons, stories, and purposes. However, overall, we mostly use a full-text translation of the Bible.