When I first began homeschooling my daughter in her Pre-K year, one of the parts I loved the most was our Morning Basket time. It included songs, Bible passages, verses to memorize, and became a way to bring our Christian faith even deeper than a typical Bible story at bedtime.
Over the last 6 years of homeschooling, our Bible time has become one of the sweetest parts of our day. Every morning at 10am, we take a break from math and reading, grab our Morning Basket and a snack, sometimes even light our candles, and have this time with Jesus together. We sing, pray, read, acknowledge our gratitude, memorize, and ponder ideas.
So in this post, I want to share my 10 favorite Bible resources that we’ve used over the last 6 years during our Bible time. This doesn’t include our Advent or Easter study ideas, just normal homeschool mornings.
Many of them are books we purchased online, others are habits that I created and have now become solid anchors. I hope this post is helpful as you gather your own ideas about what Bible time looks like in your home, whether you homeschool or not.
In no particular order, here are my 10 favorite Bible resources for kids!
The Ology- Okay I know I just said these were in no particular order, but if I had to give a #1 choice, this would be it. I love this book! It was one of the first resources I purchased for my Pre-K aged daughter when we began and it’s been a constant source of inspiration to our faith ever since. We’ve read through it at least 3 times and each time I feel as if I could go on and preach a mini-sermon from it. It’s that good.
What I love most about it is that it gets to the very heart of the gospel message and draws children (and adults!) back to Christ’s sacrificial love for us. The Ology (like the word theology) leads the reader through a systematic theology framework of what our faith should mean to us– with chapters about the theology of God, people, sin, the promise and the law, Christ, the Holy Spirit, adoption into God’s family, change, the Church, the end times, and God’s work.
It is so thorough and can be read slowly over a school year if you include the referenced scriptures, depiction of the artwork, and explanation of more abstract theological ideas. It’s great for elementary aged kids and beyond, but can also be used with younger kids with some help with understanding from parents.
This book is one that I think every Christian family should own!
Our Prayer and Gratitude Journal- Several years ago, I wanted to include my kids in a gratitude practice during our morning Bible time. So I grabbed a simple blank notebook and marker and this began the start of our prayer and gratitude journal. Nothing fancy, but a consistent anchor and favorite part of our morning that we’ve done for 2 years now.
At the end of our Bible time, I ask each child to name one thing they’re grateful for today. Sometimes it’s profound and thoughtful, other times it’s childlike and innocent– such as a fun cereal or memory. Then we follow with each sharing a prayer request. Oftentimes, it’s the same one they mentioned yesterday or the several days prior, but it reflects what they believe we should be praying for. Then I pray– expressing gratitude for the things listed and lifting the prayer requests up to Jesus.
This might just be the simplest, yet most meaningful habit we incorporate into our homeschool time– and one that I hope we’re still doing until my kids graduate. Additionally, it’s so rewarding for us to look back over the years and months to see how the Lord has been faithful with our prayers we wrote down in this journal.
The Jesus Storybook Bible- The Jesus Storybook Bible is definitely my favorite storybook Bible. The stories are written so beautifully that they always lead back to the heart of God and his love as “Never Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love”. We come back to these stories over and over again, and my kids never tire of hearing them retold. Of all the Bible storybooks to own, this is my top choice.
The ABC’s of God and Me- My real-life friend, Kelly R. Funk, wrote this book a couple years ago and it’s been such a great addition to our Bible time this past year! It’s an alphabetical journey through attributes of God and ourselves. I love it because it’s taught both my kids and myself that we are loved, cherished children who have a mighty Father, giving us names to call him and scripture verses that correspond with each attribute. For example, God is Almighty, the Bread of Life, our Comforter, Defender and so on through the alphabet.
My kids loved memorizing the names in alphabetical order and it gave us all a rich language to refer to God as we prayed.
New City Catechisms- I never grew up learning Catechisms but early on in our homeschool journey my husband I thought they’d be a great way for our kids to learn and memorize the core doctrine of the Christian faith.
In the New City Catechisms, kids are led through 52 questions and answers– such as What is our only hope is life and death? or What is God?. There’s a song that goes with each question that makes it fun and easy to learn (I downloaded the free app so it’s really easy to pull up and sing together). Even a few years later, my kids can still recite the answers to many of them!
Little Pilgrim’s Progress- This might be my 2nd favorite resource and one I’m already excited to do again in the next year or two! Little Pilgrim’s Progress is a narrative story for kids based on the Christian allegory Pilgrim’s Progress.
The story takes the reader on an allegorical spiritual journey of the life of a rabbit who goes from the “City of Destruction” to the “Celestial City”. Along the way, he encounters a variety of characters, both ones like him who are journeying to the Celestial City and also ones who belong to the world. He faces dangers and temptations but ultimately safely reaches the Celestial City and rejoices at finally being home.
It was a slower read since so much of it needed to be explained to my young kids (for example characters who have names such as Evangelist, Giant of Despair, Vanity Fair, Hopeful) as well as themes of worldly temptations, so it took us most of a school year to read through.
This book was a great resource that taught my kids about the Christian walk of faith, the challenges we might face, and that we have a King who is greater and more powerful than any giant.
The Treasure- This beautiful book was written by the same author as The Ology, so I knew I had to check it out as well. The author takes kids on a voyage through the books of Luke and Acts in a fun fictional story of two kids who find a sea captain’s old journal that gives clues leading to a hidden treasure– Jesus.
My kids enjoyed working through these books and diving into the works of Jesus here on earth. Sometimes parables and teachings of Jesus can be trickier for young kids to understand the meaning of, so this book helped to guide them towards greater clarity of more complex themes.
Hymns- We’ve been singing hymns each morning since the start, beginning with the Doxology as our very first one. Since then, we’ve added dozens of others and rotated through new and old ones. I grew up learning hymns in my conservative church, so teaching many of my favorites to my own kids brings me so much joy! The lyrics are so rich and full of the promises of God. It’s always been a great way to open up our bible time.
Some of our favorites over the years have been Blessed Assurance, Crown Him with Many Crowns, I’ll Fly Away, Nothing But the Blood, Power in the Blood, Standing on the Promises of God, This is My Father’s World, To God be the Glory, and Amazing Grace.
I print out the lyrics (usually just the first verse or two) in larger font on a piece of card stock, put each hymn on a ring to keep them in one spot and cycle through each day, and hold them up for my kids to see and learn.
The Biggest Story- This is another bible storybook, similar to the Jesus Storybook Bible, that we found over the last few years. It’s a little more advanced, better for ages 6-12, and the illustrations are beautiful. There’s a smaller, 10-chapter book that contains some of the most well-known stories from the Old and New Testaments and a longer version, The Biggest Story Bible Storybook, that has 104 chapters. It’s my favorite resource for our Bible time at Easter.
Adventures in Odyssey- I wasn’t sure if I wanted to add this one to the list since it’s not something we do during our homeschool time, but it’s definitely one of my kid’s favorite parts of our day so it made the cut! We do earlier bedtimes for our kids to protect intentional evening time for my husband and myself, so our 4 kids who share a bedroom listen to a few episodes of Adventures in Odyssey until they fall asleep.
What I love about this resource is that it isn’t just a fun narrative story, but always has a great message of faith in a kid-friendly manner. My kids are frequently saying, “Oh I know this Bible story, I learned it in Adventures in Odyssey!”. The topics they hear (such as friendship, honesty, hard work, having patience) are very applicable to their lives and give them a fun and entertaining way to hear good examples of how these characters manage life’s temptations, struggles, and successes.
We use the free radio station on their website and play it through a bluetooth speaker in the kids’ room. No more borrowing cd’s from the library, searching the bedroom for missing cd’s, or dealing with an outdated cd player. Maybe one day we’ll upgrade to the club to get access to all of them at once but for now this works great.
I hope this list of my top 10 bible resources for kids was helpful as you consider how to incorporate bible time into your own family’s rhythm! If you have any other suggestions of what your family has enjoyed, I’d love to hear them! And as always, thank you so much for reading and following along!
Stay tuned in the next week for a peek at our 2026-2027 Homeschool Curriculum Choices for Preschool, 1st, 3rd, and 5th grades.
We love the Kingdom of God Story Bible from Lithos Kids. It's separate OT and NT and it's excellent. I've read through it twice with my kids now.
I love this list! The Biggest Story has been on my list for a while, but it's probably time to add it.
I'm curious, do you feel like Adventures in Odyssey is a good fit for your youngest ones? I've gone back and forth about sharing it with my kids (I have a 7 and 3 year old who share a room), but saw some concerns online about it being too scary or mature. It's been so many years since I've listened to it, so I really can't remember except that I loved it.