Soli Deo Gloria Psalms Study–A Review

Several weeks ago we received the ebook Young Hearts Longing for God: A Pre-Inductive Study of the Psalms ($14.50) from Soli Deo Gloria Resources to review as part of our voyage on the TOS Homeschool Crew. I was unfamiliar with Soli Deo Gloria’s products, which include other Bible studies and unit studies in many subject areas, including these for science.

This Psalms study is aimed at students in 4th - 8th grades and has 30 lessons. Each lesson includes the text of one Psalms and a few questions and activities to help them study the Psalm and apply it to their life. The student is to spend one week on each Psalm studied. We actually use the King James Version of the scriptures, (the product came with verses written out from the New International Version), so I printed out a copy of the psalms from our preferred version for us to use each week. Each day we had some defining, highlighting, and question answering to do. To see exactly what I mean you can see the first lesson here.

Because we chose to use the KJV I checked ahead on each question to see if I needed to change the wording. For example, in the sample linked above you see that the student is to look up the word majestic in the dictionary and come up with two synonyms for the word as well. The NIV version for verse one (and later in verse 9) reads:

O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.

However, in the KJV the verse reads:

O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.

It was simple for me to cross out the word majestic and write excellent above it before giving the assignment to my daughter. I found that the whole study worked equally well with the King James Version, only needing simple changes such as I have described.

What did my 4th grader think? Honestly, she did not enjoy the study. She liked the parts where she was to circle or underline things in different colors. When it came to the questions that asked her to analyze what the psalmist meant, thought, or felt based on the verses, she had a hard time and did not like it.

What did I think? I, personally, enjoyed using it. I think some of the questions are a bit too challenging for a 4th or 5th grade child (age 9-10ish) to complete on their own. Being right there with Makayla we were able to make it work, but I would love to find a scripture study that is easy enough for my daughter to do on her own, to have that private time studying God’s word.

You can check out my Crewmates’ reviews of this and other products from Soli Deo Gloria Resources to learn what other families thought.

{Disclaimer: I received this ebook for free to enable my review. I received no other compensation and all opinions presented herein are my own.}