With baby boy's language skills rapidly developing, I am beginning to gear up for starting scripture memorization. Kids tend to have this amazing ability to memorize things easily and I don't want to waste those years. While we want to wait to school, we believe you can never start teaching them God's truth too soon. Right now we read Proverbs 8, Psalm 23, and Danny's verse we picked for him (Eph 3:16-21) when we are at the table. Bible time in the morning has become just what we do, something his Daddy did a great job doing over the summer. Baby gets his breakfast and then says "pray" and "Bi" (Bible) always giggling with excitement, waiting to be asked what books he wants to read. He always requests "Ro" and "John" (Romans and John), which is what we've been doing in BSF, and if we still have time we read an additional Psalm and Proverb. He is getting the reference down to his verse, although we're the only ones that understand him, and he loves hearing us read and says "gen," (again) every time we get to the end. I'm learning that even in a church setting, the mention of wanting to do scripture memorization, family scripture reading, morning devotions, or anything like it is found pretty annoying. Even more so out of the older moms about to be empty nesters, I hear 'it just isn't practical,' or 'who really does that,' or 'don't even try you'll just fail.' But here's the thing, in elementary school I had to memorize one verse a week as part of our Bible grade. It was just the norm to have weekly verses along with our spelling words to learn. We did it and the verses could get quite lengthy. Do I remember all of them? No, but I do remember a lot. Now let just think about what this meant at school for scripture memorization. If there's 36 weeks in a school year, after 5 years we would have memorized 180 different verses and that is only doing one verse a week, no passages! That's a lot of verses! I've realized if I continue down the homeschool path for my kids, the responsibility of scripture memorization falls completely on me. There is no school to rely on, and yeah it's extra work for me, but that's not an excuse to not do it. The lesson to learn from the older Debbie Downers, is truly living this out is hard, and I believe it. I'm not the most organized and diligent person, so this will require some serious training for me, but I've got to at least try. I really love the book of Deuteronomy (I know its weird). It spoke so much to me as a new parent and really showed me that I was not to take teaching my children about God and his word lightly. Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. Deut 6:4-9 If we really take this verse to heart, we should be using every possible moment and opportunity to teach our children about God. It is my job as a parent to teach them, not just throw them in church and let them worry about it. Finding time to teach my kids about God comes down to my priorities. Letters, shapes, numbers really all need to take a back seat, but it is so easy to get lost in the wordly battle for grades and neglect spending the time learning God's word. And then there's the laziness; sometimes I just don't want to do it. Love the Lord your God and keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws and his commands always. Remember today that your children were not the ones who saw and experienced the discipline of the Lord your God: his majesty, his mighty hand, his outstretched arm; the signs he performed and the things he did in the heart of Egypt, both to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to his whole country; what he did to the Egyptian army, to its horses and chariots, how he overwhelmed them with the waters of the Red Sea as they were pursuing you, and how the Lord brought lasting ruin on them. It was not your children who saw what he did for you in the wilderness until you arrived at this place, and what he did to Dathan and Abiram, sons of Eliab the Reubenite, when the earth opened its mouth right in the middle of all Israel and swallowed them up with their households, their tents and every living thing that belonged to them. But it was your own eyes that saw all these great things the Lord has done. Deut 11:1-7 The passage above hit me so hard. Here the people were being commanded to remember what God had done, his blessings, his power. How often am I having these conversations with my kids about what God has done for me? Not only do they need to hear it, but it's also a sure fast way at snapping me out of any ungratefulness. The thing is, when you study the Bible, you learn the people of Israel failed. They didn't do this stuff and their kids didn't know and obey God like they should. It's been hard for parents from the beginning, but God didn't seem to say that was an excuse. I cringe now feeling the overload of judgement coming my way over this. I can just hear the, "I'm just waiting for her to crash and burn." The thing is, I know I'll fail. I'll fail over and over and over again, but that doesn't mean I don't keep trying every time God gets me back on track. Ever since we were married, I began slowly writing down verses I wanted to memorize or have my kids memorize. After 5 years of slowly picking away at it, I have a spreadsheet of verses for my kids. Unfortunately, I haven't been consistent with it so it isn't even near covering the entire Bible, but it is a great starting point and I keep adding to it as I find more. I'm sure there are plenty of books out there on where to start with kids, what verses to learn and when, but I wanted to do what I felt God was putting on my heart. Right now I have over 145 passages listed and it keeps growing. Will my kids learn all of them? Probably not. I'd love them to, but if I'm being realistic, no they won't. I plan to use this as a guide line for selecting verses, going by age and topic to help me sort which is right for each child. I want my kids memorizing what they need, not that they don't need it all, but sometimes you need to hear a specific truth. The verses are more grouped by age but are no way in order. I don't really feel like there is a right order, just picking and choosing what is best for each kid along the way. I'm bad a memorizing scripture, always wanting to, but never getting around to it, so this list helps me a lot. As I begin teaching my kids it will force me to memorize them too, at least while they can't read. I figured I've already got the list so why not share it. If I can help make this so unachievable task a little easier for someone else, why not do it?! I will continue to add to it as I find more and more through my own study. So here it is. Just click the link and you can view it in google. I organized the verses by the earliest age I wanted to start kids learning the verse, PK (pre-k) being the youngest and MS (middle school) the oldest. I recorded the verse topic or paraphrased what it is, because I'm horrible a references. I also listed any method/materials that exist for each verse to help aid memorization or give further insight on the verse. There are also columns to list a child's name and record which ones they have learned, that way I can print it and keep track, hopefully helping them keep them fresh in their mind.
Right now we're doing the verses I listed in the beginning of this post. Our newest addition is Psalm 56:3-4, which I've added to the songs we sing at bedtime. There's no schedule. He may not say it until he is three, but we're just trying to learn and make it a fun special time. He's hearing God's word daily and that's what is important.
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