I am a Christian who has always had a very big heart for kids. Before I had kids of my own, I taught Sunday School, worked in a church office, helped with youth ministries, directed VBS, and held a position as Director of Children's Ministries at our church. When I had my own kids it seemed obvious to me that my primary parenting motivation would be pointing my kids to God.
Before I met the Jellyfish, I had one son. Cap went to church when he was a week old and spent several days a week playing in my office at the church, playing in the nursery during programming, and worshipping with us on Sunday mornings. From the time he was born he heard that God loved him on a regular basis. He had three storybook Bibles and a cross hung on his wall. He loved it all and I thought things were going well. I knew that the most important thing I could teach my little guy was that God loved him. As a young child, Cap needed to know that church was a happy place to be where he was surrounded by people who loved God and loved him.
The tricky part of Christian parenting comes in the next stage. How do you point your children to God as they get older and capable of more comprehension? The hardest part of all seems to be introducing the Bible to kids. The storybook Bibles do a good job of highlighting some cute little stories from the Bible, but I'm not sure they always get it right. Sure, we can learn that God keeps his promises from the story of Noah. But is that what that story is all about? How do we teach children the Bible as a whole? The good book has some pretty messy parts. There's a lot of death and destruction. A lot of people making really bad choices. And there are those really tedious bits about genealogy and rules and specific instructions for building stuff. If I struggle with some of those things, how can I possibly share meaning from them with my child? I tend to think ahead. I didn't anticipate actually dealing with these aspects of the Bible for quite awhile with Cap. But, I figured by thinking ahead I would better know what to do when he was ready for more in-depth Bible reading.
Enter the Jellyfish. After watching VeggieTales with Cap and now newborn Skidamarink one day, I began to wonder what VT creator Phil Vischer was up to now-a-days. I knew that he was no longer running Big Idea Productions, the parent company of VeggieTales. So was he working on anything new? That's when I came across the Jellyfish. Jellyfish Labs - Phil's new company. I read a little on Phil's blog and found out about a project he was working on called JellyTelly. JellyTelly is a web-based mini-tv network for Christian kids. It looked interesting. I listened to Phil talk about why JellyTelly existed: to help kids who spent so much time surrounded by meaningless media know what they believed and why. Sounded great to me. Then I opened an episode. There was a puppet newsman who answered questions from kids: anything from silly to deeply theological. There was a puppet Sunday School teacher who taught about books of the Bible. There were puppet explorers who shared information about God's Amazing Animals and a puppet scientist who narrated old science films to share about God's wonderful creation. There was a puppet pastor who sang unknown hymns and defined big words. There was a puppet pirate that taught manners. Plus there were other, non-puppet programs: bands that played songs to teach kids about the Bible and faith, animated rocks that specialized in Scripture memorization, and more. I liked what I saw, but the content was definitely intended for an audience of older kids. My little toddler and newborn would be waiting awhile before they were old enough for JellyTelly. So I thought.
The next morning Cap, who had been sitting on my lap for my first perusal of JellyTelly, asked me if he could watch "computer Bible." In fact, he asked me if he could watch "computer Bible" every day. First thing in the morning he would climb out of bed and ask me to turn on JellyTelly. I let him watch whenever he wanted, but wasn't expecting him to be picking up much. Over the next few weeks I was amazed at the way the Bible was becoming real to him. He was learning things I didn't know until I was in high school. At barely two-years-old, he would pick up my Bible, flip through the pages, and name all of the books from Genesis to 2 Samuel. In order. What's the 10th book of the Bible? 2-year-old Cap could tell you! He knew that the book of Deuteronomy reminds us that "God gives you his best, give him your best, and you will be blessed." He would walk around the house singing God Rocks! songs that were really verses of scripture. Long verses of Scriptures. My 2 yo knew the 8 fruits of the Spirit. He could sing 1 Corinthians 13 for you. He was blowing me away, soaking up all the information on JellyTelly.
But, it was head knowledge . He memorized all of those things the same way he would eventually memorize colors and shapes and letters. (Yes, Cap knew the first 10 books of the Bible and what they were about before he could tell you if something was red or blue.) Still, I was excited about JellyTelly. Though Cap may just be memorizing information, I knew the things he had learned would be a doorway to some important conversations later on - much later on down the road. So I thought...
I think it was just before Cap turned 3 that we got our first What's in the Bible? DVD in the mail. WITB was the newest Jellyfish Labs project, aimed at teaching kids about the Bible as a big picture, with the help of our favorite puppets. Again, I figured it was way over Cap's head. Again I was proven wrong. JellyTelly had already influenced our life by introducing all kinds of new concepts to Cap. Now it was WITB's turn to shake things up.
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