Indescribable: 100 Devotions about God and Science, a Timberdoodle Review
I’ve had my eye on Indescribable: 100 Devotions about God and Science for a while. I appreciate Louie Giglio and also the connections between Scripture and science. When Timberdoodle offered me a discounted copy to review, I took it and we added it to our daily morning time read aloud rotation. I have a hard time picking devotionals to use in our family because often the practical examples include traditional school based stories which my kids can’t relate to, or they seem too simple for the faith questions that my kids are asking.
Using Indescribable as a Family Devotional
Our faith is not the primary reason we choose to homeschool. I have always believed that we should work to pass on our faith to our kids the same regardless of how they are otherwise academically educated and that the Bible should not be another school subject in our homeschool. It is a bonus for our family that home education allows us to naturally mix faith based materials with other secular curriculum materials. At the moment, the kids also join Dad several mornings a week to read the Bible before our official school day starts, which is a good avenue for Spiritual instruction.
READ MORE ABOUT WHY HOMESCHOOL IS RIGHT FOR OUR FAMILY
Indescribable: 100 Devotions about God and Science is sold by Timberdoodle as an additional product outside of any of their grade level kits. We used it with students in third, sixth and seventh grades for this review. My kids love science and learning about the natural world. It can be difficult to find products that incorporate new trivia and facts for them, but this devotional was a hit! It doesn’t talk down to the reader and included specific examples from science that spurred on our own discussion after reading the devotion for the day. We learned about sound waves needing air to travel, so you can’t hear your friend yell in space, while our Prayers don’t need the atmosphere to travel to God. We started comparing the height of mountains we saw on a recent trip to the depth of the ocean after reading another day.
Bible with a bit of Science Trivia!
The suggested age for the book is ages 6 and up and I would even say its great for the upper elementary and middle schoolers because they have some science background to discuss and understand the more complex topics that are used to illustrate the scripture points. The process of digestion and your stomach grumbling is used to make a connection with Phillipians 4:12, “Do everything without grumbling or complaining” and we learn a new word, borborygmi (bor-bo-rig-my), the official word and onamonapia for the rumbling noises your stomach can make!
We will be continuing to read from Indescribable: 100 Devotions about God and Science for the semester. The creative discussions that it is starting for our family is a great way to get the brain moving each day in addition to feeding our faith. Sometimes we take turns reading the devotion or looking up the scripture reference in our Bibles instead of reading it on the page of the book. While it could work as an independent devotional, you can get more out of it as a family read aloud.
I like learning the new science vocabulary as we read and seeing such a wide range of science disciplines included. If you read them in order you will jump around topics learning something new every day, or you can follow the suggested reading plan in the introduction if you want to stay within a specific topic such as Space or Animals.
Does this work for Outside the Box Kids?
As I mentioned earlier, finding family devotions that engage my Outside the Box kids can be a challenge. Indescribable does a good job of using science details to show the character of God in a way that kids can relate to and be inspired by.
For kids with learning disabilities or other challenges, it can be easy to feel like a broken human because they see the ways they are different from their peers. By focusing on showing them a God who is infinitely creative, our kids are reminded that they too are made in his image with their differences being part of the creativity of humankind and not as someone who is broken or inferior.
This devotional doesn’t focus on our actions as Christians but about God’s creativity in his creation. I like this focus because Outside the Box kids can struggle enough with acceptable behavior and they don’t need more pressure to try harder to behave. We can be encouraged as we read this devotional to see that God created a world with amazing details that show us who he is. The creativity that inspired the world is also in each of us and our uniqueness.
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