Get Wisdom!

I’d like to tell you about Ruth Younts’s book Get Wisdom! published by Shepherd Press.

If you have young children, you should get this book.

Each lesson includes a page to discuss with children, including a character quality from Scripture, a definition, scripture verse, illustrating picture, examples of how the verse applies to a child, and an appropriate prayer relating to the topic. The second part of the book includes lesson plans for teaching the topics, including discussion questions and role play examples.

Click here for two sample lessons.

A couple reasons I think it’s a valuable book:

• First, explaining terms like gentleness and mercy to young children is a challenge, even for parents who have grown up in church and are mature believers. Nevertheless, helping children define those ideas helps them put them into practice.  If you’ve ever struggled to explain something on a child’s level, you’ll find this portion helpful.
• Second, Younts makes the connection between the child’s life and the Scriptures. She uses examples that are appropriate for preschoolers and young school age children. Her role play examples are excellent and utilize a particularly effective teaching method that mothers might overlook. If you’ve ever struggled to help children apply Scripture to their lives, you will find this book helpful.
• When I was a younger mom, I often skipped over the prayers in devotional books. But these are also useful as we pray with our children and help them articulate how to ask God for help. They are a useful tool.

The book could be used in a formal teaching setting, but they could also be used in casual family conversations about God. It could simply give a mom ideas for teaching her children to be good before she’s correcting them for being bad. It’s especially good for a mom that sometimes feels discouraged that she doesn’t know how to teach the Bible to her children or how to explain biblical truths to her children well.

An elementary child may be interested in reading through the book on her own, because the lesson portions are separated from the picture and character trait, and the text is not too overwhelming. It might even make a good plan for a child to use for personal devotions. I could see a child adding a few applications of his own in the blanks, or a parent writing applications as children suggest them.

Ruth Younts is the wife of Jay Younts, who wrote Everyday Talk, a parenting book that I really like. You can see my review of that book here.

In case you were wondering, I have not been compensated in any way for writing a review.