by Last year within my small homeschooling circle I taught the attending children a weekly Bible verse. To teach the verse, I used ideas from a Bible memory book for kids, called Hide God’s Word In Young Hearts by Joan Dower Kosmachuk. It’s an old book published in the early 90’s…a relic from my Kid’s Club days, what a gem though.
Here are activities that we did:
- Print the verse on poster board, then print its opposite right next to it. Example: the opposite of John 14:15 is, “If you love yourself, you will do whatever you want.” This is an eye-opener to kids, as they see how their actions/attitudes sometimes easily contradict God’s word
- Use puppets to teach the verse. (My girls love making sock puppets with yarn for hair and marker faces…EASY project)
- Print each word to the verse on a separate 3×5 cards and hang each one on a clothesline. Say verse with kids, then have each one take a turn removing a card while all continue to repeat verse. Do this till all cards are gone! (A different version of this is to write the verse on a white board and have the kids take turns erasing words)
- Make “stepping stones” out of blank typing paper. Kids can hop from stone to stone “across the river” as they say the words in order from memory. If they miss a word, they’ve fallen in the river!
- Have the children sit in a big circle and toss a ball back and forth with each catch being that person’s turn to say the next word(s) in the verse
- Sing the verse…especially if you already have the verse on tape. There are some wonderful CD’s out there with verses put to music for kids.
- Always discuss the verse and how it might be lived in our daily lives.
Verse time was a blast. But the best part, the part that really pumped was their homework.
The assignment involved drawing/illustrating the verse before our next meeting. You’d never believe how excited they were the next week when showing the last week’s verse/drawing. And it was a great review of that verse before we plunged into the next one. Not to mention the time spent creatively drawing really reinforced the impact of the verse.
My girls kept all their pictures in special folders. Each picture painstakingly drawn, full of thought and love…with the reference and verse written out below.
What great ways to get the Word in a child’s heart. I really like the musical one, because that’s the natural one for me, but I’m always impressed by words or songs that kids pick up if it’s interesting.
A good way I found with my own children is to use their toys – for instance at bath time one day I re-enacted Jesus walking on water and another time I showed them when Jesus calmed the storm. They understood it immediately.
Thanks for sharing that, Amy! I hadn’t thought of using toys to illustrate it!
I will be starting my 13th year of homeschooling this year, and I can saw without a doubt one of my FAVORITE memories is learning Scripture verses together.
Even know, I still do this with my 12-year-old. He created his own “list” of things that help him.
1. Write it. He writes the verse out.
2. Say it. He says it to himself ten times. (He usually has it memorized by this time.)
3. Share it. He comes to me and shares it.
4. Discuss it. I have to come up with three questions to ask him about the meaning of the verse in real life.
5. Hunt for it. I time him as he finds it in the Bible.
He learned all these study tools and now uses them.
Also, my older two kids have devised their own systems. Like me, my daughter (14) has a journal of her favorite Scripture verses. She took it upon herself to read the Bible through and then comes to John or I to discuss what she’s reading. (We had some VERY interesting discussions as she went through Leviticus and Judges.)
My oldest son, 17, writes his favorite verses and sticks them around his computer monitor on Post-It notes. Then he works on them throughout the day. (He’s memorized long passages this way.)
Also, he works as a checker at Target part of the day. An older Christian who also works their taugh Cory how to keep Scripture memory cards in his pocket and work on memorizing them when it’s slow in the store. Cory’s been doing this too.
I love the ideas, thanks for sharing! I honestly didn’t plan on writing this much, but you stirred my thoughts!
I’m SO glad you did, I “covet” and older homeschooling mom’s testimony in this area…what great ways for me to channel this for my own as they grow! I know I’ll implement several of your ideas! Thank you for sharing them!
Awesome ideas. This is one area that really slipped last year. I delegated it to my hubby. 🙂 I’ve already started memorizing scripture over summer and we like to do sign language with the verses!
Great idea with the sign language! I taught the girls the abc’s and some songs (all I knew!) and another parent in our homeschool co-op gave them a few more classes. It’s something I’ve wanted to get back to, and haven’t yet.