Family Scripture Study–Changes for the New Year

We enjoyed our Christmas ABC’s scripture study in December but now Christmas is over.  It’s time to choose a new focus for our family scripture study.  We are beginning to study The Book of Mormon.  Learn more about The Book of Mormon here.  With our children’s range of ages scripture study takes some flexibility, but it is worth the effort! 

Some days will find us reading a chapter from Book of Mormon Stories.  This reader has artwork and simplified text so it is great for my younger children.  It is also right on target if we want Joseph or Emma to read aloud to us.  After reading a story we discuss it as a family asking questions of each child beginning with the youngest, who get factual questions about what happened or what they see in the pictures.  The older three children get questions that tend more to application of the story.  (You can watch, listen to, and read the Book of Mormon Stories reader for free here if you don’t own a print copy.)

I printed up a little chart with 54 boxes, one for every story in the reader.  Any time we read one we can mark it off.  This also made it easy to begin somewhere other than the beginning for a change!  We decided to start reading with chapter 29.  We will read from there to 54 and then come back around to chapter 1 and read through 28. 

Every day will also find us reading directly from The Book of Mormon.  Our goal is 1/2 to 1 chapter per day.  As there are 239 chapters we will finish by the end of 2012 even if we do 200 days of half chapters.  This makes our reading more flexible to fit the children’s attention span on a particular day.  As with the reader we will be discussing what we read as a family and trying to apply it to our lives.

I would love to know how family scripture study works at your house!  Are you studying a particular book, do you read at a set time each day?  Or is family scripture study something you hope to start doing more consistently for the new year?  Leave a comment and share!