Thursday, April 17, 2008

Organizing 1 - Scripture Memory Box

I thought I would start with an easy one that has been so helpful for me. We are teaching the boys Bible Verses and the Children's Catechism at breakfast every morning. We started Jake about age 3 but have started Brady sooner and surprisingly he is getting it. Jake begin to have to many verses for us to review daily so i did this little system for review. Now John and I have a color and we just all do our verses at breakfast as often as possible.
In case you were wondering, the verses we are teaching Jake for the most part come from the Wise Words for Moms Put on/Put off List. It has really helped when we discipline him that he already knows the verse. http://www.amazon.com/Wise-Words-Moms-Ginger-Plowman/dp/0966378660
We use the book : The Children's Shorter Catechism. Our church gave it to us but you can also find them on the web.

you will need:

-index cards in various colors - each person gets their own color
-1 - 2 pieces of white card stock (or just 8 white index cards)
-8 page divider tabs (see pic below)
-index file box (we use the 3x5 cards and box)

put it together:

1. Take you 8 tabs and label each of them with a day of the week (7) and one labeled New
2. Attach these to the white index cards. If you have a piece of cardstock, first cut it into 8-3x5 pieces to use for your divider page. Then attach the tabs to them. Make sure that you stagger their placement just like the tabs are when you put them on pages.
3. I put one verse on an index card and 5 catechism q&a on a page. These go in the NEW file to be reviewed every day. For Jake - age 4 - we do 1 verse and 1 question/ week (unless really easy) but everyday we review all the questions we have gotten to on the catechism page. Brady- age 2.1 - we just started with him and he will do Catechism 1-3 and Eph 6:1 for an entire month before moving on.
4. After the verse has been memorized (what ever the time frame is) we move it to one of the days of the week for weekly review. After the Catechism page has been memorized (which for jake takes about 4-5 weeks) it also goes to a day of the week for review.



So here would be what we would do at breakfast on say a Monday:
Jake - Practice New - 1 Thes 5:16-18, Catechism # 16-18
- Review Old in Monday file - Catechism #1-5, Phil 2:14, Ps 53:3
Brady - Practice New Only
John and I aren't doing catechism so we just practice new and review old.

Hope this makes sense. I tried to be extremely thorough so it would make sense. Let me know what you think and if you have ?'s


1 comment:

Momof3 said...

Thanks for the organizing tip, we just have piles of paper near the table for our memory time! It is amazing that when we started this with Anna at age 3, Eric at age 2 was able to recite the answers and also some verses. I think we are slow to learn that our little ones are sponges and it doesn't take much to "Hide it in their hearts!" My kids also like the ABC Bible Verses book by Susan Hunt. It gives a verse starting the a letter of the alphabet and then a story explaining the verse. It has been VERY helpful in helping Anna deal with friendships!

Love the blog!!