Our First Grade Memory Verses

I love helping First Son and First Daughter to memorize parts of the Bible. It seems like such a blessing to have a mind

I mentioned before, we started using the memory verse system at Simply Charlotte Mason this year and it's working very well for us. I wrote up the verses we memorized last year and slipped them in on the odd/even days and into the days of the week. I skip Saturday and Sunday because I always forgot to read them. One day I'd like to make our memory verses and memory work a part of breakfast, but I have other more pressing habits to develop for the moment.

Everything works swimmingly as long as I remember to keep the box where Second Daughter can't reach it. She likes to rearrange the cards. In fact, between her rearranging and a couple of drops, I started numbering the cards so it would be a little easier to replace them properly.

Sometimes it's difficult to know which verses will be most appropriate for the young ones. I'm not sure I've selected the best ten or twelve verses for first graders, but they did seem to work well for us. I copied all our verses from the NRSV.

• Matt 18: 20
• Psalm 139: 13-14
• Matt 22: 37-38
• Rom 8: 28
• John 3: 5
• John 20: 22b-23
• John 6: 35
• Tobit 4: 16
• 1 Peter 4: 8
• Psalm 33: 22
• Genesis 1: 1-2

Before the year started, I selected a large number of verses I thought would be appropriate or that I particularly liked. I copied a great many onto index cards (though not all of them, once I realized how many I had selected) and stored them at the back of our box. When First Son has memorized a verse, I simple select a new one from the back of the box. Eventually I want to be sure we've memorized at least one verse from each book of the Bible, but we have plenty of time for that.

My plan was to continue reading our memory verses through the summer, but we've been a bit lazy. Hopefully posting about it will renew my dedication.