Since 1922
K-12 Curriculum Planner
Thank you for your interest in CEP Bible curriculum.
Christian Education Publications (CEP) has been producing curriculum for schools for over 100 years. Our material is sold into Christian schools of all Protestant denominations in a wide range of demographic situations. Knowing this, we deliberately create lessons that can be adapted by teachers to suit their particular classes and learning styles.
All our curricula consist of color Student activity books with age-appropriate learning and extensive Teacher’s manuals with clear, structured lesson plans, multiple-intelligence extension exercises and more. Our middle and high school Student activity books are available in both physical and digital formats.
We also offer two free online libraries packed with thousands of extra support resources: FREE sign-up!
• cepconnect.us for elementary
• cepteacherslounge.us for middle and high school
Planning a K-12 Bible program for your school
Should you be in the fortunate position of planning a K-12 Bible program, CEP can offer a dependable, effective and easy-to-use solution. One that builds on prior learning, uses best-practice pedagogy and has been written by experts in their biblical field.
The numbers prove it. Over the past 20 years, we have sold more than 7 million elementary Student handbooks. Our middle and high school curricula, which have not been around as long, have sold a total of nearly half a million copies. Combined, that’s more than the population of Arizona or Tennessee!
We understand you have a goal for your Bible program. You want your students to understand key aspects of the Christian faith and, God-willing, come to claim that faith as their own. With over 100 years of experience, CEP can help you achieve those aims.
Elementary School curricula
These are some of the Learning Intentions of CEP’s elementary curricula:
• to introduce students to the Bible, God and Jesus
• to explore what the Bible says about how God made the world, cares for it and calls it good
• to understand that God made people, loves us and wants a relationship with us
• to show how we are separated from God through sin, yet through Jesus we might be restored to friendship with God
• to show how the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus was central to God’s eternal plans
• to know that Christians’ future with God is secured. Christians will live forever with him.
• to understand that Christians have the Holy Spirit which helps them to love and worship God and live lives pleasing to him and that we are to love all people, for all are made in the image of God.
Pre-school – Hello God!
For the very youngest children, Hello God! shows 3–5-year-olds that there is a God who made the world including them. God loves us dearly. Moreover, his son, Jesus, was sent so that we could forever be friends with God.
Kindergarten – Beginning with God
A 1-year program of 40 lessons designed to introduce students to God’s big picture of creation and his plans culminating in Jesus. PowerPoints for each lesson, songs and videos, radio dramas and additional activities are available for free sign-up at www.cepconnect.us
Grades 1-5 – Connect
Connect is a 3-year program with 40 chapters each year. Students move from Year A to Year B to Year C and then start over again at Year A (but at a higher learning level). The idea is that students will work through the entire program twice in their years of elementary school.
Each year contains includes both Old and New Testament passages, Christmas and Easter lessons, and lessons on the lives of contemporary Christians.
All Teacher’s manuals include a detailed lesson plan, extensive background notes, extension activities, numerous suggestions for multiple intelligence learning, tips for teaching memory verses and songs, and more. All Student handbooks reinforce the learning and are in full color.
As with Beginning with God, there is a wealth of support material online at www.cepconnect.us
Middle School and High School curricula
These are some of the Learning Intentions of CEP’s middle and high school curricula:
• an understanding of the structure, themes and overarching story of the Bible
• an understanding of the life, message and meaning of Jesus of Nazareth
• an understanding of what the Christian life ‘looks like’ and how it differs from morality and Old Testament religion
• an appreciation of the significance of the physical bodily resurrection of Jesus and why the biblical explanation is the most coherent and probable
• an understanding of the dominant secular ethical systems of thought around today, their pros and cons, and the sufficiency of a Christian ethical framework in response
• an understanding of the dominant secular world views around today, their pros and cons, and the sufficiency of a Christian world view in response
• an appreciation and understanding of the beliefs, practices and history of the world’s five biggest faiths
• to be challenged by two lives overflowing with Christian compassion and forgiveness in the most difficult of circumstances.
The following CEP products will create a natural flow in your Bible program, building on prior learning while achieving the above learning intentions.
310,000
Grade 6 – Big Questions
As its name suggests, Big Questions, is a discussion-based program with a learning style that sets up students well for middle school.
Grades
7-10
Finding your way
This biblical overview (Genesis to Revelation) is an excellent foundation. All other middle and high school units can build on it. It ensures a level of biblical literacy across all students that is invaluable in later years.
After Finding your way, all students will have a similar structural and thematic understanding of how the Bible is put together and the one big story it tells.
Grades
7-10
Mistaken Identity
Mark’s gospel. A natural follow-on from Finding your Way, as students get to meet Jesus as they work their way through Mark’s gospel. Thematically, Mistaken Identity asks repeatedly, ‘Who is this man?’ (hence the title, as so many people, including his own disciples got him wrong).
Together, Finding your Way and Mistaken Identity help students to have a sound biblical understanding of the themes, main characters and story of the Bible while looking in depth at Jesus’ life and purpose.
Grades
7-10
Another Dimension
This unit looks at the character of the Christian life through the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount. How do we respond to Jesus? Is Christianity just more rules we have to obey, or does it offer something much more than that? Another Dimension is a very contemporary looking unit with nice pop artwork and popular quotes to help facilitate discussion.
Grades 9-12 The Resurrection
It is essential for Christians to understand the importance of Jesus’ resurrection. This unit examines all the competing theories to the orthodox Christian belief as to what happened 2000 years ago. And one by one dismantles them, leaving the Christian viewpoint as the most probable. Students are forced to think through the Bible’s account of the resurrection and what it means for their lives.
Grades 9-12 The good, the bad and the ethical
Designed for robust classroom discussion, this unit highlights and challenges dominant ethical systems of thought, which many students might have inherited without critique. It then presents a Christian ethical framework and, through number case studies, shows how the Christian life offers a consistent, compassionate and workable framework for all of life.
The good, the bad and the ethical is one of three units which help students develop key critical thinking skills at the senior high level – the other two being, A doubter’s guide to world religions (see below) and A spectator’s guide to world views (see below). All three units are designed to demonstrate the robustness of the Christian faith in the modern world in addition to teaching about the various topics.
Grades 10-12
A spectator’s guide to world views and A doubter’s guide to world religions complement each other as they effectively seek to address the same questions: What is good? What does it mean to be human? Where do I find meaning and purpose and value? A doubter’s guide to world religions looks at these questions from within formal religious structures while, A spectator’s guide to world views does so through secular worldviews. A spectator’s guide to world views specifically states that one of its aims is to prepare students for life beyond the school gate, to equip them to be able to identify and be ready to engage with world views they’ll encounter in work, the media, or at university.
Both units present the Christian faith as coherent, compelling and robust. Jesus offers answers, hope and comfort in all circumstances.
Grades 11-12 The Least of These: the Graham Staines story
Based on the film of the same name, this unit follows the story of Dr Graham Staines and his wife, Gladys, who worked in India with lepers for 34 years before Graham and his two sons were martyred by a radical Hindu group convinced he was inducing Hindus to convert to Christianity. The murders attracted international attention, as did Gladys’ offer of forgiveness to the perpetrators. The extremely moving film looks at Christian compassion and forgiveness, the claims of Jesus to be the truth, and examines where worldviews come from and if, and how, one can change one’s own world view.