Young Hearts Longing for God

Young Hearts Longing for God – a pre-inductive study of the Psalms
Soli Deo Gloria

About the product

An study in the Psalms for younger students. This 30-lesson inductive study is aimed at students in 4th - 8th grade, though younger students could do it with assistance and older students would also benefit tremendously (including moms!). The study is set up as a workbook, so you would need one book for each student. Students will dig deeply into 30 Psalms or portions of Psalms to not only find the meaning of the passage, but make appropriate personal application, as well.

My Thoughts

I love seeing Soli Deo Gloria at the end of messages from various Christian leaders.   Wondering what it means?   It’s Latin and it simply means To God Alone the Glory.   The unit studies of Soli Deo Gloria are designed to

“cause learners to be captivated by God's "bigger picture." All of life, including math, science, history and language arts, is part of God's HUGE redemptive plan. Seeing God's hand at work in all of life, and seeing each piece as part of a larger picture is one of the main goals of education. Glorifying Him through all that we do, all that we learn, and all that we are is ultimately what we are called to do as His children.”

As a member of the TOS Homeschool Crew, I received a copy of their pre-inductive study of the Psalms.    Funny enough, I recently embarked on a personal journey on Psalm 23 itself as I participate to a women’s bible study on Thursday morning.  We are going verse-by-verse on this particular Psalm, discuss what each of these verses mean to us and will do various crafts around this Psalm.

Needless to say, I decided to embark on this pre-inductive study with my 9 year old son, Alexandre.   Somehow, I sense that God  wants me to learn more about him while spending time on the Psalms.    So we are slowly discovering the Psalms included in this study together.   And so far, we are enjoying it quite a lot.   And to top it off, Psalm 23 is also included in this study.   When Alexandre saw this he happily declared “Mommy this is the Psalm you are doing at the church!”.  Indeed my son it is.  *grin*

Every time you discover a new Psalm, you will be asked to answer a series of questions after reading it.   Actually, sometimes you need to do something as well.  Let’s take the Psalm 23 for example.   The first two activities we had to do was to underline in specific colors the phrases that tell what God is doing for us, and the thoughts that sound pleasant.   These two activities made us re-read the psalm a couple of more time at a slower pace since we needed to determine if God was doing something and/or if the thoughts we had were pleasant.  Then we had a couple of questions we had to answers.  These questions are based on the Psalm 23 itself so evidently we had to go back to it and read it again.    The next activity was asking us to read a book about the care of sheep.   Mmmm!   I wasn’t sure if I had one.   But after a few minutes of thinking it dawned on me that indeed we had a  book about this.   Well it is a children’s book but I thought it would be good.   I asked Alexandre to read it to his younger siblings and this alone made him practice his reading out loud.   The book was The Shepherd Boy by Kim Lewis.  Finally the last activity was asking to write about how God has cared for us like a shepherd.    This year, I asked Alexandre to start writing in a journal while doing his Bible reading.    He does it.  He is very dedicated to it.   So it wasn’t a problem to ask him to journal for this study.  

We are learning quite a lot while doing this study of the Psalms.    It requires us to slow down, dig in the psalm and discover something new about our Creator.  There are about 30 psalms that are covered in this specific study.    The activities linked to each psalm covered in this study varies from 6 to 10 questions to answer.    And it can easily be done first thing in your day with your child.    Now mind you, we already have AWANA to cover so what I have decided to do is to the one psalm per week and do it together.   We could do it all one morning or take it slowly throughout the week.   

As a conclusion of this psalm, I would suggest to do a craft like the first one I made during my women’s bible study.   We had to paint a sheep representing us on a canvas.   Around the edge of the canvas, the Psalm 23:1 is written.    And to personalize the painting, we had to write our name on the painting.    The sheep is me.   I am guided my the Shepherd.    The reason why I have painted red as a background is that it represent the blood of Christ shed for me.    Like a sheep, I might be prone to wander but my Shepherd is there and will direct me on where to go.   He also takes care of me and provide for my needs – actually above and beyond what I can imagine.     Behind the canvas, the word TRUST is painted because we need to trust God that He will guide us and provide for our needs.    I think that I will do this with Alexandre as soon as I buy the appropriate paint to do this project.  

We are enjoying studying the Psalms together and having a pdf files means that I can also do it with my other kids eventually when they reach grade 4th and  up.    If you want to discover God through the Psalms, this study will bring you through thirty of them.   

On top of the Bible products, Soli Deo Gloria also have History, Geography, Sciences as well as Teacher Resources.  

A sample of this pre-inductive study of the Psalms can also be downloaded directly from the site. 

The Young Hearts Longing for God is available directly from Soli Deo Gloria for the price of 16$ US.

This review was possible because I received a free pdf file of Young Hearts Longing for God from Soli Deo Gloria.