Ten Verses cards

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
2 Timothy 3:16-17
I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.
Psalm 119:11

Last night I listened to a sermon* by Voddie Bauchman, and he was exhorting parents to have their children read and memorize scripture. He said, "You've got to pour everything in there you can get in there! Get it in there. And when you think you've gotten it in there, just stuff a little bit more."

I laughed out loud at that, and replayed it for Mark, because that is so my motto. :) Just stuff it in. Right now, when our children are literally sponges, when they are able to memorize and retain what they've memorized so easily, we want to pour God's truth into them.

In June, Mark and I each made a list of the top five things we value in terms of homeschooling our children, and "memorizing God's word" made it to the top of both of our lists. We want to stuff it in there. :)

As I set out to select our memory verses this year, I asked God to help me find verses that would suit each of our children. Instead of just choosing several verses that we would all memorize together, I wanted each child to have his or her "own" verses; verses tailored to their individual personalities and/or particular areas of struggle. I began by listing each child's name in my journal and then noting particular patterns of sin I see in them. For one child, these are the words that I initially jotted down: self-control, lies, self-worth, obedience, love. Then I found verses that dealt with those areas.

For instance, one of the verses that child will be memorizing is this one:

The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in men who are truthful. (Proverbs 12:22)

Then I rounded out their "set" by choosing verses that are specific to that child's interests or personality. One of our boys is very imaginative and is always telling stories. I made sure that some of his verses contained illustrative language:

After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. they were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: "Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb." All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshipped God, saying "Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen."
(Revelation 7:9-12)

So at this point I had a handful of verses for each child, but I still wasn't sure how to put them all together for our memorization time.

Then I came across this "Ten Verses cards" post of Kendra's, so I shamelessly stole this concept from her.

I wrote out ten verses on a card (actually, it took two cards) for our four oldest children (yes! Adelia (2) gets her own set of verses, too!), and they look like this:


Everyone's verse #1 is our theme verse for the year. That space on the left-hand side is for stickers. When they learn a verse- and can recite it (with reference) to daddy- they get to choose a sticker and stick it next to the verse on their card. I showed them the envelope labeled: "10 Verses Stickers" that is tucked into our memory box. It's amazing to me how motivating stickers are. They were seriously enthused about the prospect of getting to choose a sticker. Kids are so great!



*Sermon link here, if you're interested. (And thank you, Cutzi, for the link!)

10 comments:

  1. stacy, i appreciate you and your BLOG so much! i feel encouraged and inspired, each time. i am amazed at your creative homeschooling ideas =).i am schooling our 10 yr old daughter ... your creativity and ideas are inspiring me. thank you.
    ps - we LOVE voddie's teaching!! =)

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  2. Emily~
    Thank you for saying so! :) I'm so glad you're getting ideas for your schooling with your own daughter.

    (We love Voddie's teaching, too!)

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  3. I'm so thankful you post this stuff on your blog. So are those ten verses intended to carry them through the whole year, or do you think your more voracious memorizers will get more 10 verse cards as the year progresses? Just curious. :)

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  4. Jodi~
    :) Since Ella is on Verse #2 (and we spent only one day last week on Verse #1), um.... yes. It's probably very likely that she'll need another card. :)

    However, I also chose longer passages of Scripture for her to learn. She's learning an entire Psalm for one of her "verses", and even her other verses are usually 2-3 verses long, to make it more challenging for her.

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  5. Weeelll... I can't take the credit. I got that from Amy on facebook. :-) I have been enjoying it too, though.

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  6. I love how you thoughtfully & prayerfully considered who each of your children are in regards to picking verses. I love it SO much!! It's something I feel like I'm examining every week, "Lord how do you want me to love, discipline, care (fill in the blank) this specific child?"

    What a great idea to stuff in as much as possible with God's truth. Bravo Stacy (&Mark)!

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  7. I love how intentional you are. We always memorize as a family but I am inspired by the individual memorization. We have done longer verses and I am always amazed by how much the littles can remember. Voddie is amazing and you inspired me to step it up. Thanks Stacy for the fabulous ideas.

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  8. Thank you so much for your ideas!! For Adelia, does she get shorter verses? I have a little one about her age and it never occurred to me to give her scripture to memorize like I do my older ones!! Thanks for being inspiring to so many of us!

    Kara

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  9. Cutzi~
    Really? Somehow I missed that! (Well thank you, Amy, then! :))


    Kamille~
    Thank you for your kind words!


    Carolynn~
    You're welcome. I am seriously just so glad that you (and others) are encouraged by this!


    Kara~
    I'd already planned for my next post to be the list of Adelia's verses! :)


    Blessings to you all as you nurture your little ones today!

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  10. God's word is so amazing. I love how memorizing can be so good for them but also help us out (and convict us!) in our day too.

    Great job you! Making sure these important truths are hidden well in the hearts of your gang!

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