Memorizing God’s Word is worthwhile. As we have been homeschooling this year, we’ve also been memorizing verses together and it has been so sweet.
I’ve used many methods for memorizing scripture in the past, but my current favorite method comes from Charlotte Mason directly. It is simple and efficient, and it keeps older memory verses in daily review. We have already memorized several verses through this method and I’m excited to continue it throughout the year.
Here’s what you’ll need and how to set it up:
Get an index-card box, tabbed dividers that fit inside it (you’ll need 41 of those), and some index cards. It doesn’t matter if the dividers have letters on them; you can flip them over and use the other side for labeling.
Label the dividers like this:
One divider should be labeled “Daily”
One labeled “Odd”
One, “Even”
Seven dividers should have the days of the week on them: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and so on.
And the other 31 dividers should be numbered 1 through 31.
Then place them in the box in that same order: Daily, Odd and Even, Days of the Week, Dates of the Month.
Next, copy onto the index cards the Bible verses or passages your family wants to memorize. Put one of those verse cards behind the Daily divider; this will be the passage you’ll work on memorizing first. You can just stack the rest of the verse cards in front of the Daily divider to be learned later. If your family already has some verses memorized, feel free to put those on index cards and distribute them evenly behind the other dividers in the box. If not, don’t worry; the other dividers will fill in as you progress.
(These instructions originally appeared on “Simply Charlotte Mason.”)
Each day during our school hour, I pull down our white box of verses. We go through the new memory verse at the front of the box, the odd or even day verse, the day of the week verse, and then the day of the month verse. (We don’t have all the month days filled in yet, but we will!)
You end up reciting 4 verses each day. And because you cycle through all the days of the month, you will review verses you worked on quite a while ago. And, at the same time, you are only working on learning one new verse at a time. Once you have the new verse memorized, you simply move all the verse cards back one space. The every day card becomes the “odd” day card, the “odd” day card becomes the “even,” and so forth.
As we’ve been working through our verses, I have found that it takes us about a week to get the new one down pat. So we are adding a new verse each week.
We also read scripture together as a family, so I keep an eye out for memory verses as we read and I go ahead and write them down on cards so that they’re ready for when we need a new verse. I just stick them in the back of the little white box we use.
Keeping scripture in our minds daily has really been a help to me. I can easily lose focus and having the Words of God before me always helps.
How do you memorize scripture? Consider using this method to hide God’s Word in your heart.
