We recently, thanks to the author, tried out 180 Days In The Word. It’s thusly named because you spend 180 days of your school year reading through your entire Bible. When this was offered up for us to review I was pretty excited to give it a go as the boys had just been given new Bibles and I thought it would be a lovely way for them to get familiar with the new items.
Let’s face it, it’s difficult finding your way around a new Bible, especially since, at least for us, you don’t tend to buy and switch Bibles very often. Which means learning the new locations for things can prove to be slightly challenging, or perhaps it’s just that it makes you feel like you suddenly no longer know your way around your Bible? Either way, I was delighted to be able to use 180 Days In The Word.
How I Use It:
The curriculum is pretty straight forward. You look at the schedule and reading the corresponding chapters in your Bible for the day. It also comes with a lovely little printable journal. I was really delighted with this portion too!
The journal is simple, but effective. Each week has the Hide It In Your Heart verse, which is a verse assigned to each week for memorization. At a glance you can read your verse through each day! There’s a lovely space on the journal page for all the things you want to pray about from requests to thanksgivings.
There’s a slot for the first four days to write down something that you might be pondering, a verse that spoke to you through your readings that day, whatever suits you. On the fifth day there is a lot more room to really journal about the wisdom you’ve found in God’s word for the week.
For us, we would all pull out our Bibles and I would read aloud with the kids reading verses or chapters here and there through the daily readings. Each person was free to use their journal page as they wished, or not at all if they didn’t feel led to.
What I Liked About It:
The idea behind the entire curriculum was lovely! We’ve done the old Testament and the New Testament in separate school years before. We also generally read through a variety of Bible books through the school year, but we’d never considered trying to read through the entire Bible before.
I absolutely love the journal page! I think that even after you read through The Word in 180 days you could still print out and bind up the journal pages to continue to use through Bible readings.
I loved the simplicity of it. It really is that simple. Sit down, read your Bible, journal. Grow. You don’t need to own a specific version of the Bible, in fact you could just listen to an Audio Bible if you wanted, it’s THAT simple.
It’s only scheduled for four days of reading. This is lovely if you’re a four day book person. If you have a full day and can only get to a portion of the reading for one day, you can make it up on another day!
What I didn’t Like About it:
This isn’t a true dislike, but something I feel I should share for those of you out there with younger children: There’s a lot of reading in any one day. You’re reading through the entire Bible in 180 days, but in a given week you only read the chapters on four days and Review & Reflect on the 5th. Now, here’s something to keep in mind. For older students I think they could easily handle this. My eldest was fine with the amount we read in a day, where as my younger child {10} was overwhelmed and phased out after a few of the chapters were read. You could easily break this down further if you school more then 180 days!
Bottom Line
This is a really lovely way to read through your Bible in a school year and it’s more than just reading through your Bible thanks to the journaling pages! If you’re looking for a little guidance to read through the Bible with your children this school year 180 Days In The Word is a tool that will help you accomplish just that!
~written by Kendra, Aussie Pumpkin Patch
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