Homeschool Review: Apologia Press book "Good Morning God"

Apologia Press sent us the book Good Morning God ($14.00), to review.  This is a cute picture book to help teach children, age 1-8 learn to pray and build a personal relationship with God.

The pictures are nice, and so is the text, for each day of the week, the book has a short "prayer" that talks about things the child does during the day "in the kitchen I make a sandwich", ways the child's parents teach him/her about God "Mom and Dad teach me when I'm sitting, when I'm standing, and especially when I'm walking", etc. I took a week and read each day's "prayer" to the girls as part of our morning school time. 

In my opinion, the age range stated for this book is abit wider than it should be. Little Bit (20 mo) isn't ready to sit and listen to this book yet, and the art work, while beautiful, isn't animals, so doesn't keep her attention. Obviously the animal thing is just her, she loves all things animals, but The concept of having a short conversation with God each day is still beyond her comprehension as well, IMO. I'd say a starting age of 2 or slightly older would be more accurate. I also feel that this book was too "young" for my 7 1/2 yr olds. They didn't dislike it, but didn't love it either. At this age, they already know to have daily prayer time and talk to God, so a short "scripted" prayer seems unnecessary at this age, at least in a family where daily prayer is a part of family life. So I would set a target age range of something more like 2 1/2 to 5. 

In the back of the book, there are short "lesson plans" (for lack of a better word) with a some suggested discussion questions, etc. to go with each day. I chose not to use these with my children since we were currently doing several other Bible things as part of school and, after reading over the questions, I felt it, like the book, was better suited for younger children (and older than Little Bit, who isn't to the point of answering thought questions, hee hee). I did think they were well-done, and can see this book, with the lesson helps in the back, being used as a simple morning worship or homeschool "Bible class" with an older toddler or preschooler. 

This book could be used by any Christian family with young children, homeschooling or not, and would work with any teaching style. 

 In addition to the worship/Bible time idea mentioned above, a parent could help a child to memorize the prayers (the repetitiveness and pictures would make it easy for a pre-reader, to be able to look at the pictures and know what to say for each page), and use the book as a personal devotion/prayer time in the morning. It would also serve to help a preschooler learn the days of the week.

One other thing that I need to mention, as a Sabbath-keeper (and knowing that many of my readers are also Sabbath-keepers), is that this book does refer to going to church on Sunday. This would be a consideration in using it as I mentioned above, where the child worked toward using it on her own. But, depending on the age of the child, could be discussed and the book adapted as the parent saw fit. It would be a consideration though, and might make me pause in purchasing this book, because of it's format.  I've never had a problem reading stories to my children about people worshiping on Sunday, they are very much aware that many Christians do worship on Sunday, however because this book is written in the first person, that makes it more of an issue. 

Apologia Press offers several other books, on topics such as history & geography, world view, and writing. I also wanted to mention that they offer a coloring book (for only $4) to go along with this book, it can be seen here. 

This product was sent to me to review because I am a member of the TOS Homeschool Crew. You can go to the TOS Crew blog to see what other crew members thought of this product, as well as seeing reviews on a wide variety of other products. 

Disclaimer: I was sent a free copy of this book in exchange for writing this review. No other compensation was received, and all opinions are my own.