Little Baby Bible Steps: Reading the Bible [6-12 Month Old]

Posted on by Chantelle Marie

I had wanted to spend time reading the Bible to my son every day, but I found that he wouldn’t sit still for long enough. With this method of reading the Bible he sits and reads with me for up to 20 minutes at a time.

That might not seem like a long time, but considering that he is usually so busy and active it’s quite a feat. He loves sitting and reading! When I say, “Let’s read the Bible!” he crawls up really fast and reaches up for me to pick him up. 

Here’s a short video sample of how I “read the Bible” to my super-busy 9-month-old son. It’s simple and probably something a lot of you are already doing, but it’s what I’ve found to be effective for our family at this stage!

Little Baby Bible Steps: Reading the Bible [6-12 Month Old]

 

Tips for Engaging Babies During Bible Time [6-12 months]:

  • Find a Bible board book so they don’t tear the pages – I have one that I don’t particularly love the stories in, but I got it for $2 at a garage sale and I just reword the stories
  • Point to pictures on the page 
  • Let them turn the pages as they want to
  • Sing through the Bible – use songs from their Bible class if you can, so they learn them
  • Talk in an animated way about the stories in between songs
  • Make the animal noises from the stories you tell
  • Ask them questions and give them the answers (“Who made the world? God made the world!”)

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Question: Did/do you have Bible time with your babies? What has worked for you? Tell us in the comments below!

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Want a book that teaches your children how to act during worship? Buy “Zeke’s Sunday” printable ebook for just 1.99! 

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5 thoughts on “Little Baby Bible Steps: Reading the Bible [6-12 Month Old]”

  1. Great tips! Board books were the way to go when my kids were that young. Even non-Bible books can be turned into “Bible time.” I would point to the animals and talk about God’s great creation. Now that my son is two, we started using The Jesus Story Book Bible, the greatest children’s Bible of all time, in my opinion.

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  3. You have a lovely voice! These are good tips. I’m not sure how old this post is so I’m not sure how relevant this will be at your son’s current age, but it held my twin two-year-old sons’ attention to watch your video, so it must continue to work.

    This post shows you doing an excellent job of Deuteronomy 6:7- teaching your child and talking of the words of the Lord. I think in my own experience I have previously neglected that aspect. My focus was more on I Peter 2, giving them the “sincere milk of the word.” Since Psalm 12 teaches that the Lord’s words are pure and He preserves them, Proverbs 30:5 emphasizes that “every” word of God is pure, and Matthew 4 shows us that we actually live by “every” word of God, it was important to me to give my children the exact words of the Scripture, to form the most sincere, pure, lively, true portrait of the living Word of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is important! But I think until very recently (and your post helps me with this) I have gotten into the ditch on the other side by neglecting to teach them in my own words. It’s such a good idea to give simple questions and answers and sing Bible-based songs. I’ve seen a lot of beautiful results from those two things in the short amount of time since I started doing them! Thank you for the encouragement to continue and some guidance in how to do so.

    You asked for comments on how we do Bible time, so here’s how I did it at 6-12 months old.

    -reading while they nursed (it would work while bottle feeding too.). This was a time when they were still and quiet, so I just read to them straight from the Bible. We were able to read through the whole Bible multiple times with all those feedings! I made a chart pairing one New Testament chapter with three Old Testament chapters that were not Psalms and one that is a Psalm, which allows you to read through the whole Bible in 150 sections (depending on reading pace AND feeding pace- I was usually able to read a section in 1-2 feedings, once I got the hang of nursing.) It can be a lovely study for an expectant mother to pair the chapters (for example, I paired John 1 and Genesis 1-3 because of the parallel language in John 1 and Genesis 1- “In the beginning was the Word” and “In the beginning God.”). It made edifying use for me of that HUGE amount of nursing time in the beginning, and I trust the Lord used it to bless their spirits even though their minds may not have understood
    -When they started to have regular table food meals, I tried to read them a short passage of Scripture after blessing the food. As they’ve gotten older and their vocabularies have expanded, I’ve begun emphasizing words they use a lot and understand, both in choosing which verses to read and in saying the word emphatically. I also emphasize words of important concepts, such as God’s name, the gospel, or love. Both of these methods of emphasizing seem to really engage the children!
    -we have not been able to find board Bibles that suited us, because we have a conviction against making images (drawings, etc) to portray God. Acts 17 states that we ought not to think the Godhead is like to man’s art. We wanted to avoid giving that false thought to our children. We did make our own board book of the account of Christ’s birth! But my real point was to say that for their first birthday we were able to give them their own Bible that, though it has NO pictures, is tear resistant and washable! It’s called The Waterproof Bible, by Bardin & Marsee Publishing. It’s been a great blessing because I hated telling them they couldn’t hold the Bible, but they kept tearing ours . Now if they want to hold mine I give them theirs instead and they enjoy it. As far as actually doing Bible time from their Bibles, we make a little game of it- they love to flip the pages, and I try to quickly locate a succinct verse on the page they have open and read it before they turn again! We do a lot of “and the Lord said unto Moses **flip** and the Lord said unto Moses…” that way hahaha. (Seems like that phrase is practically on every page of the Old Testament.)
    -I used to sing Scripture songs during diaper change times, but have fallen out of that some. Now that they’re older sometimes they remind me!
    -when they want to snuggle in the mornings sometimes I attempt to recite a Scripture from memory
    -singing Scripture songs to help them fall asleep

    Those are my ideas! Hope they help someone 🙂

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