A Scripture Memory System that Works For Adults & Kids
A scripture memory system that really works for adults and kids! Easy to make and use for the whole family to memorize Bible verses together.
Scripture memory has always been incredibly difficult for me. I purpose every single year to “do better,” but I never do. I fail each and every year no matter how badly I want it to change.
I’ve tried making a list of scripture to memorize and using a scripture memory printable with checklists to hold me accountable. I’ve tried doing it as a challenge on the blog. I’ve tried telling others to hold me accountable. I’ve tried writing it down as a goal. But every year, I walk away more and more discouraged.
Scripture memorization has always been a spiritual discipline that’s overwhelming and difficult for me.
We started family devotions when my oldest (who is now 4.5) was just 18 months old. It started with simply reading the Bible at the breakfast table, and eventually evolved and grew into what we do today.
I’ve written about family devotions and family prayer several times:
- How to Do Family Devotions with a Toddler
- How We Do Family Devotions with a Baby & Preschooler
- 8 Ideas for Family Prayer When You Don’t Know Where to Start
- A Morning Family Quiet Time Routine
It was through family devotions that I began to regularly find myself memorizing scripture. There’s nothing like seeking to teach and train your children to know and love the Lord to make you want to know and love the Lord more!
At first it was slow going because my son was so little and it took him weeks to memorize Genesis 1:1 because … well, two year olds don’t have a large vocabulary! But as the years went on and he slowly began to store up scripture in his heart, so did my husband and I!
One day, my son outgrew the model of scripture memorization we were doing.
We were reviewing a lot of verses each day along with the catechism. He was memorizing scripture so quickly pulling from a list I had already made plus what we were introducing through the Fruit of the Spirit Curriculum, and we found ourselves forgetting which ones he knew and which ones he didn’t. Plus family devotions were starting to get too long for a four year old and another two year old now in the mix.
Not to mention, I had an ever growing collection of scriptures I had written on index cards, hoping I’d learn them by osmosis, floating around my house. I didn’t want to throw them away because I really wanted to memorize the words on each card! I really wanted to store God’s word in my heart! And at this rate, my children were memorizing more scripture than I was!
It’s been three years since we set sail on family devotions, and a couple of months ago I finally sat down and made a plan for our family to memorize scripture together!
I’d been hearing about the Charlotte Mason Method for memorizing scripture, but I’d never taken the time to really look into it. At first glance, it seemed a little labor intensive. And truly, at first glance it does seem so.
BUT as I watched the video explaining Charlotte Mason’s method and read blog posts sharing about how well this method worked for other families, I knew I had to give it a try.
Note: I’m not going to recreate the wheel in this post. You can visit Simply Charlotte Mason to watch the video and learn how to set your box up here. In this post, I’m showing you our box and sharing how it works for our family which I hope you find helpful! 🙂
Scripture Memory Box
I already had a pretty recipe box floating around, so I grabbed it and relocated the few recipe cards in it to my recipe binder.
Then, I headed to the Dollar Tree to grab some index dividers to fit in the box.
I labeled the index dividers just like Charlotte Mason suggested:
- Daily
- Odd
- Even
- Days of the Week (Sunday-Saturday)
- Numbers 1-31
I gathered all the index cards with scripture scribbled on them I had collected through the years, scripture printables leftover from this challenge, Fruit of the Spirit Curriculum’s scripture memory cards, and downloaded these scripture memory cards from Simply Charlotte Mason. I put them all in the front of my new Scripture Memory Box.
If I knew there were scriptures we ALL had memorized already, then I put the date we memorized it (pulling from my memory as best I could) in the top corner and started adding them to the various dividers. Again following the method explained in this video exactly!
In the end, we still had dividers left blank, but with time we are moving more and more scriptures through the memory system!
Every morning we do family devotions together around the breakfast table, and when it comes time to do scripture memory, we pull out our box and begin our routine of scripture memory!
It has been such a blessing to our family! We are memorizing more scripture than ever before, and our family devotions are becoming more family-oriented and not just kid-oriented as we are all participating and growing in the Lord together.
What about you? How does your family memorize scripture together? I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments!
Other posts you might enjoy:
- How to Make a Prayer Notebook
- My Prayer Life is a Mess {and 3 ways I’m seeking to improve}
- 4 Ways to Be More Intentional in the New Year
Thank you, family!
Following you once in a while for tree years now. This post is going to help us a lot.
I’ve always been the same way about scripture memorization! I love the idea of the CM method, so I gathered the supplies for it a while back and we started, but got side tracked after only one verse! Now, we have out FOTS verses that we are working on hanging on the wall, but I have a feeling I’ll be pulling the box out again soon!
We recently started memorizing scripture w/friends. We have a monthly lunch & kids recite their verses and earn points for their family & we are collectively working towards a goal where we will take a special day trip together & do something fun. My family is learning verses around the dinner table. Our goal is to memorize passages with our kids & we are all beginning with a Psalm. The monthly get togethers provide accountability & motivation!
Kathleen Thompson taught us this years ago. I didn’t know it was the Charolette Mason approach, but that makes since now. She faithfully did it with her girls who are now grown. I’m sure she would love to give you some tips or encouragement along the way.
I’ve been using this method for a few weeks but as a person who is rarely sitting down at home (energetic three year old boy at home), I found the box a bit hard to keep up with. I know it’s lame, because it is five minutes, but somehow five minutes is easier to come by on my phone. 🙂 I know they have an app on Charlotte’s page, but I am RIDICULOUSLY cheap and didn’t want to pay for it lol. (I’ll work on that.) However, I just thought on my lunch break today that I could do this on my phone, for free, through Todoist, an app I already have. I don’t have other to do list apps, but I bet they could work, too. Just add the verse you are working on and tag it “every day” (like “Matthew 6:9-13, Lord’s Prayer every day”). It will remind you of this every day. Then when you have it memorized, change “every day” to “every other day”. Then change it from “every other day” to “every Sunday” (or whichever day is still empty so if you have Sunday and Monday, add it to Tuesday). Then change it from “every Sunday” to “every 1st” (or whichever date is available). You only have to change a few things to save yourself work: instead of moving all the cards so to speak (which would mean changing the due dates on forty tasks), just add the newest to the next available spot, so you only have to change 3 tasks or so every time you memorize a new one (daily->every other day_>Day of the Week_>Date of the Month). The list is automatically created (and you could always add the date memorized to the end of the scripture).
Great idea! Thanks for sharing!
Hi Leigh Ann! I’ve followed your blog on and off for a few years now – I started a bullet journal in 2016 after seeing your post about bullet journaling, which has helped me so much. I hadn’t realised I’d stopped getting your updates in my email until I saw today on Facebook about the revamp and remembered I hadn’t signed up again after I changed my email address 2 years ago. So now I’m set up again and ended up reading this article (as a result of getting the free cards)… I definitely want to try this method. I wanted to say that the best way we found of memorising Scripture when our children were younger was with the songs of Colin Buchanan. If you’re not familiar with him he’s a children’s entertainer from Australia and sings songs about Biblical truths and also many which are just scripture verses set to music. We’re a very musical family and used to play the CDs at home and in the car, and the fun tunes helped us get the verses into our heads. I would recommend it to anyone with young children (even if you have another method of memorising, the songs are just great anyway!). Thanks for your blog and your ministry.
I am so glad you’re back in contact 🙂 And I will have to check out his music. We love using music too for helping get God’s truth into our children’s hearts.
Do you have a personal memory verse list you are working on that is different than the kids?
Not right now. Sometimes I will have another set of verses I’m memorizing, but most of the time I just let them memorize what I’m memorizing or vice versa.