memorization

The Bluedorn's at Trivium Pursuit list memorization as one of the "Ten Things to do with Your Child Before the Age of Ten." We agree. We have already seen so much fruit in having our children memorize passages from the Bible - both in their lives and ours.

During Family Worship, we've been working through the book of Proverbs and memorizing passages that Daddy chooses. During morning Bible time, I am using the Truth and Grace Memory Books our church endorses as a guide. It is helpful because many times the kids are working on the same verses and catechism questions in Sunday School.

We were really moving along in the area of memorization and then something happened and we kind of got off track. I read about the Scripture Memory System explained at Simply Charlotte Mason and we're going to give that a try. We've got the index card box and the dividers, but actually making the scripture cards is still on the to-do-list.

During our weekly poetry readings, we are working on memorizing some of Robert Louis Stevenson's poems (since we are concentrating on his works this year). Right now, we are working on "The Swing". I've been mostly working with my K5-son in memorizing it, but it brought a smile to my face when I heard my K3-daughter playing alone the other day and swinging one of her dolls and quoting, "How do you like to go up in a swing? Up in the air so blue?"

Bible Time & Family Worship

Each morning after breakfast the kids and I have "Bible Time". Usually we are reading through a Bible story book or some other children's book based on the Bible. We just started reading again through God's Wisdom for Little Boys and God's Wisdom for Little Girls. We love those books! They have been very helpful in training our children as we can point back to some of the character traits, like diligence, contentment, helping, etc., as we're going through the day. Other resources that I have used and will be looking to in the future can be found at Doorposts. They have wonderful products for training children.

At night, after supper, my husband leads us in Family Worship. Our time together consists of three aspects:

1. My husband reads a passage from the Bible. (We've been studying through 1 & 2 Samuel recently.) Then each person (well, at least the ones who can talk) asks him a question about the passage. Sometimes he asks us a question too.

2. We sing hymns and songs. I pick out the hymn of the month and any other songs we sing.

3. We pray. My husband generally asks each person to pray for a specific request.

One of our goals is to put a picture of what we're studying during Family Worship in our Family's Book of History to get an idea of chronology, but we have not done that yet. That's a goal for next year!