a gift for my girl

We kind of stumbled onto this challenge-idea: that Julianna would finish the entire Beginners Bible before we gave her a ‘real’ Bible of her own.  And I’ve loved it.  If the Bible holds up to the wear and tear we’ll use this idea with all five of our children.  

Julianna poked through at a pretty slow pace for most of the fall, but picked up speed in November.  We ordered her a Bible and once the package arrived she really got motivated :)  The last stretch she was reading three or four chapters a day.  

And Thursday morning she tasted victory!  So excited for my baby girl - well, almost 7 year old baby girl!  Reading through the whole Beginners Bible wasn’t a cake walk for her.  For one, she’s not naturally one to persevere at a task like this.  

And reading has not come super easily for her.   At one point I was concerned that she was maybe slightly dyslexic, but once I read a bit on the internet (yes, I know, not a flawless info source) I decided it was maybe more of an eye-tracking issue.  Even now she’ll mis-read simple words.  She flops “a” and “and”, and doesn’t even notice until the sentence doesn’t make sense and she goes back to correct herself.  She often switches “saw” and “was”.  Yesterday she read ‘everywhere’ as ‘where ever’.  [Anyone have any experience or insight with this? I’d love to hear from you.]

I’m so proud of her – for perseverance! And hard-work!  And learning that loving God’s word takes time and energy!

She’s sitting up at the dining table now, paging through her Bible looking for the verses she knows :) 

Next up: Lydia.  She took to reading like a professional and it won’t be long until I’ll be listening to all 526 pages of the Beginners Bible, round two.  By the time Luke steps up to the plate I’ll be correcting his mistakes based on memory.  (As a family during our morning devo times we’ve already plowed through this particular Bible several different times!  Speaking of… if you are looking for a great family Bible time resource we just finished God’s Names published by CDG (see it here) and I loved it.  LOVED.  Highly recommended.)