I am a firm believer in expository Bible study-for myself and to do with the kids. I like to take Scripture and go through verse by verse and look at what God has to say to us. I also like Bible studies that help us draw application for our own lives. So I was interested in the family Bible study materials offered by Real Life Press. Real Life Press has a series of Bible study guides written by Heidi St. John.
We received for review Firmly Planted, Gospels, Part 1. This comes only as a downloadable PDF and included a Family Study Guide and Student Book. This guide is meant for the family to use and includes material that you can read and discuss with children of all ages.

The Family Study Guide is divided up into ten weeks of Bible study. These studies start in Matthew with Gabriel’s visit to Mary and continue through part of Jesus’ ministry and miracles. The studies include Scripture readings as the basis for each week’s lessons, and the Scriptures come from the gospels.

The weekly lessons are divided into an overview and then four daily lessons. The overview has a copy of the verses for the week printed out for easy reference. It then gives an overview picture of the lesson for the week and the Scripture memory recommendations. The whole series of Bible studies is called Firmly Planted, and, as explained at the beginning of the study, there are seed/plant icons throughout the weekly lessons that guide me as a parent in knowing exactly what the focus of that part of the lesson is.

- The Seed- This is the big lesson idea or concept.
- Planting the Seed- This is the Scripture memory for ages 4-11. (More Planting the Seed offers a little harder Scripture memory section for older children.
- Watering the Seedling- This section is a short story that helps children think more deeply about the lesson.
- Daily Study- This is the daily devotional that is based on the week’s theme verses.
- Digging Deeper- This is a section to be used specifically with older students as they think through the lesson.
- Taste the Fruit- These sections are the application sections that help the children- and me!- draw applications from the lessons.




- I love that it’s geared for the whole family and can spur discussion for older and younger kids. Some of the worksheets would probably be too difficult for young kids, but there are some good choices in the workbook. Although we’ve used it for Bible, it could easily be adapted to use a family devotional time.
- I love the verse by verse approach to teaching the Bible. Presenting thethey kids with Scripture and taking time to talk about what it means is an excellent approach to Bible study.
- There are many discussions of the gospel and salvation and sin and grace. These are some great discussions that I love to have with my kids. Even though they’ve grown up in a Christian home, they need to have a personal faith. And the readings in the Family Bible Study provided some good opportunities to talk about that.
- The girls have enjoyed it because the daily readings are long enough for a good discussion but not too long for young kids to sit and be involved. They’ve really enjoyed some of the discussions that have come up as we read.
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