Upon beginning our homeschool journey this year, I felt completely overwhelmed by the amount of things I wanted my children to learn. I knew, however, that the biggest benefit to this new schooling, would be freely studying the Bible and digging deep into God’s Word! That’s certainly one thing that they wouldn’t be learning as a part of their curriculum if they were in public school.
I believe that memorization skills are a terrific thing to teach early and can provide a great sense of accomplishment, and in turn, pride in our children. Young children are capable of memorizing much larger chunks of scripture and other information than many people think. Memorization is a great way to train our brains to quickly generate and retain knowledge. Having this in mind, I came up with our current 5-day method of retaining a bible verse – or collection of verses – each week.
I use our current Geography curriculum, Galloping the Globe, and tie in a verse the correlates with our weekly lesson. We do school five days a week here, most weeks anyway, and by Friday, we are capable of both speaking and writing the verse from memory. I find the activities just as helpful for me to remember more of the Word!
Here’s our easy technique…
Day 1: Introduce the Scripture.
I write the Scripture on our dry erase board every Monday morning, we read it together, and then look at the context of the verse in the Bible. Now we understand who is involved, the setting, and a little more background. We discuss what we read and then copy the verse down on paper.
Day 2: What does this verse mean to you?
On this day, I ask my son to write down what he understands/gets/relates to with the Scripture, in his own words. We openly discuss our feelings, opinions, etc.
Day 3: Draw a picture relating to the verse.
Much along the lines of writing the Scripture in his own words, on day 3, he draws a picture of whatever comes to his mind after reading the verse. The name of the verse serves as a title to the picture and he writes the words again below the picture. (He loves Wednesdays.)
Day 4: Copy the verse and work independently on memorization.
I leave the responsibility of completely memorizing the verse on day 4 to my son. He rewrites it on paper and sometimes on the board over and over again. I hear him in his room on these afternoons practicing…this always makes me smile.
Day 5: Speak and write from memory.
On Friday mornings, first thing out of his mouth is usually, “Mom, mom, are you ready to hear my verse?” He will then go to the classroom to write the verse perfectly on the board (in cursive lately, which is another great pride of his right now). Week after week, the sense of accomplishment continues.
I love that we have found an easy, pain-free way to memorize Scripture. This method developed after a couple months of trial and error, but now it’s something to look forward to each and every week. I treasure it in my heart that our routine is building in him a future foundation of God’s Word – and a habit of making it important enough to include in every-day learning.
What about you…do you incorporate memorization skills into your classroom? I would love to hear some of your methods of teaching scripture to your children.