Discovering Our Amazing God (and other titles) — Junior High Bible Curriculum series

by Jan L. Harris, Howard Lisech, and Bonnie Lisech

Deeper Roots Publications

The authors of the Rooted and Grounded high school Bible curriculum have come out with a new series for grades 7 though 10. There are four titles in the series:
Discovering Our Amazing God
Discovering Who I Am in Christ
Discovering Christlike Habits
Discovering Christlike Character

The four volumes are best used in sequence because they build conceptually, but individual volumes can also stand alone. The first volume begins by building a foundational knowledge of God. The second leads into our relationship with God. The third introduces building blocks of our walk of faith with discussion of faith, the Holy Spirit, prayer, decision making, worship, and Bible study. The fourth volume focuses on character building by addressing topics such as integrity, forgiveness, humility an self control.

Each volume is presented in six to nine "lessons," but each lesson is broken down into a number of days (from 7 to 21). While you might follow the exact progression of the curriculum, the publisher suggests taking two days for each day's lesson so that there's plenty of time for discussion. If you stick with the faster progression, you might complete more than one volume in a year, but taking twice as much time on many of the lessons will take about one year to complete each volume.

Just as in the Rooted and Grounded course, each lesson also includes a one or two-page introduction about an unreached people group accompanied by beautiful artwork—artwork is by Mary Ann Beckett. This makes it easy to integrate prayer for each of these groups with regular lessons—sort of like incorporating the same ideas presented in the book Operation World into your studies and prayer life.

This series was originally written with a classroom setting in mind. The publisher has also created Home School Editions that are more appropriate for most families. However, even the Home School Editions often seem to expect that there are two or more students working together, which might or might not be the case. This means that you might find some activities or lesson instructions impractical if you are working with only one student. For example introductory notes for each lesson include instructions for gathering DVDs, props and costumes for dramas, visual aids, and supplemental books, plus bulletin board, field trip, and project ideas. Some of these may not be practical but many ideas can be used or adapted in some way. Even if some activities do not work in your situation, this should not detract significantly from the core lessons.

The study is non-denominationally Protestant. The lessons continually direct students to Scripture, but teaching material (much of it intended to lead discussion) does present a typical evangelical Protestant viewpoint. In a typical lesson, the student reads from the Bible, then answers comprehension, analysis, and application questions.

Books have colorful covers and are heavily illustrated with cartoons by Bob Beckett plus graphics, in addition to Mary Ann Beckett's missions-oriented artwork. Journaling pages, titled "Reflections," are included in student books to encourage students to write, sometimes in response to lesson assignments, and often on their own so that they learn to "journal" as they study the Bible. There are numerous writing assignments throughout this series, and you might even have some of these do double duty as language arts assignments. Student books are consumable, so you’ll need one for each student. Students should be able to answer lesson questions and even complete some of their writing assignments directly in their books. Some writing will need to be done outside the books.

Memory work is included in all lessons, but aside from those verses, other Scripture verses are purposely rarely included in the student book so that students become more familiar with the Bible itself by looking up the verses. However, the teacher’s guide does include all verses in both NIV and KJV.

The Teacher’s Guide for each volume is essential. It includes introductory notes for each lessson, reproduction of the student material, teaching notes in a side column on each page, the Bible verses, answer keys, and tests for the end of each lesson.

The entire series stretches students to both learn and apply Scripture. Both discussions and assignments are designed to push students to deeper levels of understanding and self examination. Of course, discussion requires some parent or teacher interaction, so this is not a course for independent study. Students can complete some of their work on their own, but some preparation and presentation time will also be required from the parent/teacher. You might combine students who are a few grade levels apart in a single study for the sake of efficiency. This will be easier with older students than with younger since the courses are fairly challenging.

Free PDF samples from each of the books are available through the publisher's website.