Memorizing scripture?

[ardeur]

Being a big fan of the "Elsie Dinsmore" series in my youth, I was often impressed with her family practice of memorizing a scripture verse every day, and then gathering together each morning to recite and discuss. I adopted that habit for quite a while and really enjoyed it. It's hard to stick to, though!

Do any of you have your children memorize scripture, either as part of your homeschooling curriculum, or as a family practice? Do you memorize as much as a verse a day? Thoughts on that?

I really enjoyed memorizing a verse every day, and it's really not as hard as it sounds. Over time, of course, you should probably repeat verses. I don't think one day is enough for some verses to REALLY stick, but at least you're mentally chewing on scripture all day long!

[Jill]

My kids memorize verses from the AWANA program they attend. When they were younger, they learned a verse a week. Now that they are in middle school, they do long passages every week.

[Theodore]

We had a book of Bible verses that ran A through Z and memorized all those, in addition to the books of the Bible, the Lord's Prayer, Psalm 23, the twelve tribes of Israel, the twelve disciples, and part of a shorter Catechism (never did make it more than a third of the way through). It's certainly a good mental exercise, though the amount of content eventually builds up to a point where you start forgetting things almost as fast as you memorize them, and you really need an element of competition (AWANA, for instance) to keep it fun.

[PacificOhana]

I don't think I would do more than a verse a week. If my goal is both to exercise the child's memory AND work on comprehending the message, I might touch on it every day, challenging them to recite, and also adding three things as the week progresses: context of the verse, showing how the words skillfully set forth the meaning, and writing it in their own words.

[eclecticeducation]

My kids do AWANAs and they learn about a verse a week. I'm not sure if they could do a verse a day because they have poor memories (oldest is in the 9% of working memory) but it does sound like a good idea.

[dkocur]

[heidijo]

We have always had the most success with memorizing scripture to music. The Steve Green Hide Em in your Heart CDs are the best. Sad to say, there are a lot of junky ones out there that aren't catchy enough to hold your interest, let alone help you memorize. There is an old scripture memory series called GT and the Halo express that was excellent too but hard to find.