Bible Resources We Used at Every Stage

Toddler and Preschool years (Age 2-5)

Storybook Bible

• Jesus Storybook Bible
  We read this together at least twice, and he would often revisit it on his own whenever he made a connection between our other Bible reading and something from the book.

Character

• Big Thoughts for Little People: ABC’s to Help You Grow
  This book emphasizes values from A to Z. Every topic and illustration sparked meaningful conversations between us. What I appreciated most was that it encouraged us to pause and talk. Sometimes we’d spend more time discussing a single page than actually reading it. It gave my son the chance to ask questions, share what he was thinking, and connect what we were reading to everyday life.

Devotions

• The Ology: Ancient Truths and Ever New
  We loved the illustrations. I remember my son sharing deep insights which would amaze me, considering his age. I’ll assign this to him again when he is older, maybe in Grade 5.

• Indescribable; How Great Is Our God; The Wonder of Creation: 100 Devotions About God and Science: 100 Devotions About God and Science
  These are faith-based devotions that relate to science and all of God’s wonderful creation. We read selected chapters together, based on the topic my son was interested. Then he browses these books on his own, usually before naptime, especially Indescribable.
  
  📌 Tip: Place your faith-based books on a shelf or in a box beside your bed. In our experience, my son naturally browses these books or requests that I read them to him whenever he’s playing in the bedroom or when it’s sleepy time.

• Grace for the Moment: 365 Devotion for Kids
  We only read this from January until April before my son’s official kindergarten year. This book became our family night devotion. Some reflections were not relatable when focused on school experiences and friendship. My son is homeschooled and honestly, does not know anything about real friendship at 4. We had to improvise a lot, but we continued reading this since we felt the message as a family, and my son loved it.

Early Reader

• The Beginner’s Bible: Timeless Children’s Stories
  My son started reading at 3. When he was 4, he would ask me to read this book because of the large text. Eventually, he would read some chapters on his own.

Other Books

• My First Prayers + My First Bible Stories
  These books were my son’s very first prayer book and Bible storybook. These were gifted by his godmother (thank you, Ninang Nina!) when he was just two years old. He absolutely loved it. He would spend so much time looking at the illustrations and ask endless questions about what he saw. At first, I was careful not to let him damage the pages. But he was a curious toddler, what can I do. I eventually decided that a well-loved book was better than a perfectly preserved one. I simply let him explore it brutally freely! I probably repaired it at least thrice a year and lasted until he was 4. Haha!

Kindergarten (Age 5-6)

Storybook Bible

• The Child’s Story Bible
  This is a thick book with few to almost no illustrations. I saw it on our homeschool provider’s book list and tried reading it in a PDF sample. I didn’t appreciate it at first. I thought it was too detailed for a kindergarten, too serious, and not enough pictures. Nothing like the Bible storybooks we owned before. I just bought the physical book without worrying too much since we were already done with the other option—The Jesus Storybook Bible. And wow, honestly, I underestimated my son. I assumed he wouldn’t enjoy it. And to my surprise, he listened and sometimes asked to read more than one chapter per day. There were stories where he just pulled out another book to connect the images he had seen before.

• The Kingdom of God Bible Storybook: Old and New Testament
  This was originally intended to be my son’s storybook Bible for Grade 1, but he often asked me to read it until we finished the book. Many times, he would even choose to read it on his own or listen to its audiobook.
  These books also helped reinforce what he learned from The Child’s Story Bible. Now that he’s 6, he still reads these books frequently, like at least five times a week.

The Bible

• NIV Adventure Bible Storybook
  We didn’t really use the NIV Bible for our daily readings unless we were looking up specific verses. It also became a great opportunity to teach my son how to navigate the Bible using the thumb index, helping him quickly find books and passages on his own.

Reference

• Rose Deluxe Timelines: Bible and Christian History
  I didn’t require myself to use it every day in kindergarten. We just brought it out whenever my son had questions or when we wanted more context about the time period or a specific person. For example, my son was interested in King David and Paul.

Picture Books

• The Garden, the Curtain, and the Cross
  For years, this was one of his naptime books. He loved studying the illustrations and would often ask me to act out what was happening in the pictures with him before finally drifting off to sleep.
  
• Various The Berenstein Bear books
  We have a big collection of these books. The classic ones were not necessarily faith-based books, only the more modern ones. But the entire collection really made a great impact on my son’s values and faith.

Grade 1 (Age 6-7)

The Bible

• NIV Bible Adventure
  In Grade 1, our goal is to read directly from the Bible. We continued using our NIV Bible because it has been familiar to my son since kindergarten, making the transition from Bible storybooks to Scripture feel more natural. We also appreciate its child-friendly language, flexible cover, and thumb index, which helped him learn how to locate books and verses independently. As we studied each passage, he gradually became more confident navigating the Bible on his own.
  
  
• ESV

References

• Rose Book of Bible Charts, Maps and Timelines
  We compare ancient maps with modern ones to see how places have changed over time. Sometimes, we also use Google Earth to explore those locations more closely.
  
• Rose Deluxe Timelines: Bible and Christian History
  We continued using this as well since this book presents both Christian history and World history in a parallel timeline.
  

Other Books

• Little Pilgrim’s Big Journey Part 1-3 (The Pilgrim’s Progress for Kids)
  These books were filled with symbolism. These are based on John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, an allegory of the Christian faith. At six years old, my son didn’t immediately understand everything the places or characters represent. But he had read these books a lot of times and also listened to the audio versions. I can tell he was able to see the stories with a deeper meaning and connect them to our real-life experience. I love these books so much because my son can easily narrate every chapter. I guess the story is really well written. Parts 1 and 2 are the more kid-friendly version of The Pilgrim’s Progress, while Part 3 was an imagining of what Bunyan might have created, had he written a third part.
  
• Still not outgrowing The Berenstain Bear books
  My son refused to declutter his collection. He even told me he’ll give these books to his future children! My goodness!

There was no schedule to finish the books within a certain number of weeks unless it was our main Bible resource for homeschooling.

If a chapter led to meaningful discussion, we stayed there. If my son wanted to continue reading, we continued.

I will continue to update this post as we go along.