Thursday, September 18, 2008

Memorizing Scripture with Children and for Myself

One of my home school goals for William this year (as well as Ben and myself) is to memorize scripture. I learned earlier this year that my guys are sponges when it comes to memorizing so I knew this would not be a difficult goal for them.

The hard part is for me to consistently work with them and review verses we've already learned. And for me to learn the verses. My brain isn't quite the sponge that their's is.

I decided an easy place for us to begin is with ABC Verses. You take the alphabet and use a verse that begins with each letter. We are learning a new verse every week. At first I feared this would be too many but I concerned myself over nothing!

It's made even easier for us by listening to the Bible Alphabet Song on our Songs from The Psalty's Kids Bible CD.
I found this list which contains most of the verses used in the song. However, I have adjusted them to NIV and I've changed a few of the verses.

Of course, you could develop your own list but that would have taken more time and energy. This seemed like an easy place to start.

Every morning, after morning chores, we all sit at the kitchen table for Bible time. The kids look forward to this time. They fetch their Bibles and sit excitedly. I have underlined in their Bibles the verse we are learning so they start looking for it when they sit down. Not only are they memorizing scripture but they are also learning how to look up verses in the Bible, about the Old and New Testaments AND the order books come in the Bible. Keep in mind they don't read yet so the underlining helps them find the right spot.

Then we all say the verse together, they say it individually and we review previous verses. Both my boys are doing great! Last week we learned Acts 16:31. At one point during the week Ben came to me all excited because he'd heard a woman on another CD say "Acts." I love that he's making connections between what he's hearing and what he's learning.

Even Ellie tries to say the verses. She gets a couple of words right in each one. She's only 2 years old so I'm not expecting much from her. But it doesn't hurt to familiarize her with the Word or the process now!!

This is a fairly simple method of memorizing. If you are interested in more ideas on memorizing scripture be sure to check out the Scripture Memory System at Simply Charlotte Mason or read this article on Scripture memory by Teri Maxwell. Be sure to read part 2 of the article here.

What are you doing to memorize scripture for yourself as well as put the Word of God into the hearts and minds of your children?

7 comments:

mer@lifeat7000feet said...

Stephanie...my mom used ABC style with us, and my sister and I can still recite our way through most of the alphabet some 30 odd years later. What a foundation you're laying for your children!

Amy said...

I LOVE the idea of underlining their verses in their Bibles. So, what Bibles do your kids use? The only complete Bibles my guys currently have are their story Bibles...

Stephanie Kay said...

My boys each have a little NT so we're only underlining verses in the NT for now. Ben and Ellie each have larger full Bibles from their baby dedications. I've been thinking about getting those down and using them just for our at-home Bible time.

Sarah said...

LOVE the ideas here. We have several CD's (Hide your Word- Steve Green, and one on Scripture from A to Z to name a few) that have really helped the girls learn verses. Before all of our travel this summer the girls were helping to make an ABC scrapbook that had verses for each letter of the Bible and helped them to remember their ABC with pictures that are familiar to them. I need to get back to that.

Wherever HE Leads We'll Go said...

What great ideas! Not quite to the memorizing stage with Emily, but food for thought later. Anything to get her to hear the Word right now is great. Planting seeds in her little mind!

I struggle with memorizing Scripture myself. I recently hung 8 verses on my bathroom mirror so that I could memorize them. And I am sad to say I have barely read them. Very hard to memorize something that you don't read! *sigh*

Alicia said...

Love this! And since we just started AWANA, this will come in handy!

lifelaughterchaos said...

ok. now i feel like loser mom!

this is a wonderful benefit to homeschooling! keep persevering!

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