Wednesday, December 11, 2013

"The God Puzzle" Blog Tour

About the book: The God Puzzle is a colorful, easy to use tool to help you communicate to your child the rich truths about God, His ways, His will and His love. The God Puzzle will help you address doctrinal themes of the Christian faith in a kid friendly way, present Bible lessons in an interactive way that will hold the child's attention, and deliver quality teaching with no preparation needed.

Seventy-five percent of children leave the church when they leave home. Something isn't working. Sunday School isn't doing it all. Kids need answers, good ones. And they need them from you, the parent. This book enables you to give them simple, clear answers.

What makes The God Puzzle unique?

- Ready made discussion questions for parent to ask their child in each lesson

- Can be done at any pace that works with your family . . . every night, once a week, 10 minutes here, 30 minutes there . . . it fits into realistic family life

- Puts the pieces together for a child to understand God, the Bible, and the Christian faith

- In each lesson the child responds to the truth so they understand their relationship to God is personal and life transforming

- Any parent, whether they know nothing or a lot about God, can start teaching their child today with no prep

- Deep theology put into language a child can understand

- Deeply Biblical, each lesson points to Christ

- Put in an order that starts with creation, and teaches the Bible as one story that all points to Christ

- Child stays engaged by filling in blanks, crosswords, drawing, matching and using their Bibles as they learn


Purchase your copy: http://ow.ly/r7gQh

About the Author: Valerie Ackermann has a BA in Theology and has been a full time Children's Ministry Director at Parkwood Community Church in California for over 10 years. She is also a weekly Sunday school teacher, wife, and busy mom of two boys ages 9 and 11. She has hands-on experience as a children's ministry professional, teaching and leading children of all ages. Growing up in a Christian family in a small town in Saskatchewan, Canada, she has wonderful memories of knowing God from an early age. She has a passion for kids to know the deep truths of God.

Find out more at LeadMeToGod.com.



My Take:

I am always looking for new and creative ways of teaching the Bible to my daughter. She has several coloring and activity books that are biblically-based that are pretty good, and we try to read a chapter from the Bible each day.

When I saw The God Puzzle up for review, I jumped at the chance to get it even though my four-year-old is a little younger than the target age for this book. (7-12)

What I liked most about this book was how relevant it was to children in the present day while still being completely focused on the Bible. The way the author does a wonderful job explaining difficult concepts like the Trinity, sin, and hell in a way that a child can easily understand. The gospel is clearly presented, and the entire book points to Christ, just as the Bible does.

I also liked how this is a true Bible study workbook for kids. Every lesson encourages kids to read verses from the Bible, study them, and apply them to their lives. There are some games and puzzles to complete that would keep the child engaged, but they don't take away from what is actually happening throughout this book, which is the study of God's Word. I can see this workbook starting a lot of "God Talk" between kids and their parents.

My husband liked this book as well. He teaches "Overview of the Bible" classes at our church, and he especially liked the pages at the end that showed the categories of the different books of the Bible and some verses to memorize. He also liked how the book emphasized the whole plan of Scripture and how it all points to Christ.

The only negative that I was able to see with The God Puzzle was that there were a couple of errors/typos that I noticed as I glanced through the book - things like there being too many blanks to fill in for that particular word. (Page 85, in particular).

When I first requested to be included in this blog tour, I thought that I could maybe modify the lessons in this book to accommodate my four-year-old daughter. As I looked through the book, however, I realized that this book is geared for elementary and middle-school-aged children and would be difficulty to adapt for preschoolers. This is my own fault, and I will not mark my rating down because of this. We will definitely be pulling this workbook out in the future to go through together with our daughter.

I will give The God Puzzle ... 4½ BookWorms.










Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Higher Life Publishing through Litfuse Publicity. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this is accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."

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