Middle School Mondays: Devotions and Bible Study

I've tried several Bible study courses with the girls over the years.  They've each done some Kay Arthur studies for children but didn't really enjoy them.  We tried a few of these Hidden Treasures series inductive Bible studies by Wheeler  which were slightly better but have only a limited number of available studies.  I've looked at other studies and rejected them because they remind me too much of reading comprehension questions and busywork.  This year I've decided to take a different approach.

For our family devotions, we are using a delightful book based on the Westminster shorter catechism entitled Training Hearts, Teaching Minds by Starr Meade.  For each question there are six days of a short devotional with a few Bible verses highlighting a particular aspect of the question and answer.  With a total of 107 questions to cover, it will last us for awhile.  I've also selected one hymn for each month to sing and learn together.  Since I'm trying to include my 4yo as well, I limited my choices this year to hymns with a chorus so that he could participate.

For the girls' independent Bible study, I decided to challenge them to read and study something new.  Since most of their reading has come from historical books or epistles, they are spending this year reading through the Psalms.  Each day, I've been assigning one psalm to read, a verse or two to copy, and a couple of questions that I write on their check sheets, usually based on what is being said about God or some aspect of how the psalmist is approaching God.  In truth it is a brief rather cursory introduction to the Psalms, but my design is to expose them to the overall beauty and richness of the Psalms.  It is my hope that along the way they will find some bits of wisdom and treasure that will spark their interest to return and give this book a deeper, more thoughtful study as they mature.  Hopefully this first glimpse will lay a foundation on which future studies can be built.