Bible Alive! Tuesday, The Battle For the Promised Land (A What's in the Bible? Review)

The older children (ages 9-13) finally, finished up reading the Pentateuch last week, and started into Joshua on Monday. So this weekend, I picked up Phil Vischer's What's in The Bible? #4, The Battle For The Promise Land, covering Joshua, Judges, and Ruth.

I think it's awfully nice of Mr. Vischer to stay one step ahead of our reading, so the children can have a nice kid-friendly introduction to the books, before they read them.

This fourth instalment in the series, might be my favorite so far, too. What really impressed me, was when I told the children the fourth disk was out, my 13 year old asked if we could get it right away. I never would have expected he'd be sold on a series full of Sesame Street-esq puppets.

What he really likes about it is, that unlike Veggie Tales, it tells the facts about the books of the Bible, and offers definitions for hard words, like apostasy. I like, that it explains the tricky bits, like all the killing, that takes place in Joshua - or at least makes some good headway into explaining it. I'm sure I still have lots of interesting conversations ahead.

My only "complaint" was with the summary of the book of Ruth. The format is great. It's done as a popsicle stick puppet theater presentation (click, here, to see it for yourself). But, it's overly condensed. One of Naomi's sons, and daughter-in-law, is left out entirely. And, the concept of kindred-redeemer, is not explained as clearly, as it could have been. Instead, quite a bit of time is spent on confusing jokes about how Naomi's husband, and son might have died (run over by a bus, etc).

But, I thought the summary of Joshua was excellent. And, I love, LOVE, the Fabulous Bentley Brothers' "Judges" song (you can view it too, here, on YouTube). Though, I'll admit part of why I love it so much, is the loud groan, that comes from the children, whenever they see these guys.

For more Bible themed fun, be sure to check out this week's Bible Alive! Tuesday link-up, at The Fantastic Five.

It's great to be a homeschooler.