Wise Up: Middle Grades Bible Study (Review)

Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

The middle school years can be challenging, even for homeschoolers. It is a time of growing up, hormonal changes, and often social issues. As I help my children navigate these challenging times, we lean on God and trust his word to help us to guide them. I was really excited when I read about Wise Up from Positive Action Bible Curriculum and the chance to review it.

Wise Up is a Bible curriculum that goes through the wisdom of the book of Proverbs. It is designed for students in grades 6-8 and includes a student workbook and a teacher’s manual.

I was excited to try it, but honestly when it first came in the mail, I thought I might have made a mistake.  It was a thick book with dense looking material. While we don’t mind deep study, I also knew that we were ready for a summer break.

We normally continue with Bible study through the summer, but in a lighter more devotional style.  I was afraid my daughter would resent the extra summer work.

However, I had no reason to be concerned. We got started and she enjoyed it so much, that the week she was at church camp she took her book with her. She wanted to work in it during her personal devotional time.

The curriculum is split up into 35 lessons, each one designed to take about a week.  Each week includes a teacher lesson that is done with the student and student exercises that the students complete independently. There are also weekly quizzes that can be used with the program.

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For our family, Bible curriculum is more about learning and growing than grades, so we made the decision to skip the quizzes. However, if you needed grades or had a student motivated by grades they would make a great addition to the program.

They also included scripture memorization work that can be used with the course. We did not use that part this summer because we were already currently working on a scripture memory plan but we may add it in the fall when we finish our other program.

The teacher’s manual had three different sample schedules, three-day, four-day, or five-day. Since we were doing it over the summer, we modified the three day schedule. However, for the lessons we do in the fall I will probably use the four or five day schedule. I really appreciated how easy it was to customize.

I found that it worked well for me to do all of the teacher directed work for the week on one day, then I could let her finish the lesson exercises at her own pace during the week.

The teacher’s manual provided me with everything I needed to know to teach the lesson.  Each lesson has target truths that they want the student to learn. For example, in lesson three one of the target truths was “A wise person knows how to handle conflicts.”

It also gave teaching strategies, a script you can read for the lesson, and additional teaching suggestions.

The manual also included the pages from the student exercises with answers, which makes grading and discussing easier.

The student exercises had the students digging into different Bible passages and answering questions, completing charts, and filling in blanks. While much of it comes directly from the scripture, there were also questions that allowed them to reflect on those principles in their own life.

Overall, I loved that Wise Up had my daughter digging into scripture, dealing with difficult but important topics (pride, courage, fear, righteous thoughts, and sins of the flesh) and that it was well laid out. The only negative I found was that it could feel a bit overwhelming at first, but once we got into it we found it easy to use. We plan to continue slowly working our way through it over the summer and then including it in her regular school work in the fall.

Be sure to check out how other Review Crew families used it in their homes by clicking on the graphic below.  You can also check it out at Positive Action Bible Curriculum.