Member Spotlight II: Andie Davidson, Quiet Times for Kids

A self-developed study on Proverbs for Andie and Scott Davidson’s children converged with their desire to develop a family-based business in 2010.

The result is Quiet Times for Kids devotionals and Bible studies, available through their website at quiettimesforkids.com.

The homeschooling Davidsons were initially struck by the dearth of Bible studies and devotionals for children in lower grade levels. They decided they needed to develop their own for their children so they would have a systematic study of Scripture on their level.

The first study was on Proverbs, developed in 2009. Andie created a template for their kids to do some copy work, answer some application questions, and draw a picture, all for one verse per day.

Then the family studied the letter of James, and a devotional for that was created for the young ones.

The studies that the Davidsons were creating also had practical advantages: They were reproducible so that as their children became and become old enough to read and understand the intricacies of God’s Word, they can also use the studies. Plus, the children build a binder of their studies undertaken in their own quiet times. After the Proverbs and James studies were finished, Andie decided that maybe she could expand her efforts. That led to topical studies on being a peacemaker in the home and about the armor of God. Then came studies on church history and, now volumes on Advent as well as the 12 Days of Christmas.

Shortly before any of this started, though, Scott and Andie had attended the 2009 Family Economics Conference offered by Generations with Vision, which is run by Samaritan Ministries member Kevin Swanson. The conference encouraged families to create alternate sources of income from the home.

After Andie had created the Proverbs and James studies the following year, something clicked for her.

“I think God put it on my heart to search out a way that I could help our family income through a creative, home-based business,” she says. “The idea kind of hit me that maybe I could combine that idea and the devotionals.”

The Davidsons’ original goal was to make at least enough money to pay for homeschool curriculum for a year.

“It definitely did way better than I expected the first year,” Andie says. “That was a great blessing.”

Families are blessed by the packaging of the materials, too. After buying it once, they can use it again as many times as they want, printing out pages as they go. The devotionals and studies are mainly sold as downloadable documents at quiettimesforkids.com, although a few studies are available as spiral-bound workbooks. Not only do the downloadable products save money as more children come along in a family, since they can be printed out unlimited times, but specific studies can be printed out for specific needs. For instance, a child who was having trouble being at peace with other family members could be directed to the peacemaker study. In addition, there are free sample studies at the website.

The Davidsons recommend the children work through the studies at the pace of four or five days per week, with individual studies taking from four to six weeks to complete.

Beyond teaching children about Scripture, Andie hopes that the studies will have other results:

• Enable families whose churches follow the liturgical calendar to gear their home worship time to the same schedule.
• Help families to customize their worship time with what the children are studying in their own quiet times.
• Get young boys into the habit of having a daily quiet time.
• By getting children into the habit of taking charge of their own quiet time, homeschooling moms are given the opportunity to prepare lessons at the beginning of a day or to have a quiet household for a bit as younger ones take their afternoon naps while older children do their Bible work.

God is taking their efforts even beyond that, providing opportunities to share their work with Russian-speaking families, both in their own area as well as in Russia and Kazakhstan. Scott and 11-year-old Talitha Davidson traveled to Eastern Europe in early 2011 to promote family-based discipleship at two churches and bring some of their studies that had been translated into Russian by friends.