Today’s Excerpt: Lesson Opening Activity

To start, read these three facts to your kids and then ask them to repeat them back to you.

• The moon is 238,000 miles from Earth.
• Humans are the only animals with chins.
• Dolphins sleep with one eye open.

After they repeat the facts back to you as best they can, explain that this is one type of learning: Reading or hearing words to know more facts about the world. It’s about memorization.

Now see if they can guess the answer to these intentionally tricky riddles that you or an older kid reads out loud to them.

• One knight, a man, and a woman got in a boat. The boat sank. Three people survived. The man, the woman, and who? (The knight.)
• What goes up and down but doesn’t move? (A staircase.)
• What building has the most stories? (A library.)

Explain that this is another type of learning: Using curiosity and logic to see something new.

Memorization, curiosity, and logic are ways that words require us to use our minds.

But there is another way to read that has more to do with the metaphor of awakening our hearts. This is called devotional reading, contemplative reading, divine reading, or wisdom reading.

Wisdom reading is:

• Repetitive
• Experiential
• Transformative
• Heart-centered
• Meditative