HOW DO YOU GET KIDS TO MEMORISE BIBLE VERSES?
Have you ever been frustrated when trying to teach kids Bible
verses? Parents not helping? Kids bored?
Tips:
- If
the parents won't help revise the Bible verses at home, rather than
trying to teach a new verse at Church every week, choose 4-5 key verses
and reuse them during the term.
- Use Bible songs to teach the verses.
In 2009 we started a Pathfinder Club. Pathfinders is similar
to
scouts but with spiritual and Bible work, and one of the
requirements is that the kids memorise 6 verses in 6 months and get at
least 75% on a test of them. The difficulty for us is that
many of our kids are not academically gifted, in fact some of
them
could barely read and getting them to spend time memorising something was
virtually impossible.
So this was our plan of attack:
- I recorded various kids and adults reading the Bible verses including
the reference.
- I found songs for the Bible verses or made up little tunes
to sing them to and included where each verse was found.
- I
made a CD of the verses being read and sung.
- We played CD when driving to and from activities.
- We played the CD as background music at
activities.
- We sang the Bible songs at Pathfinder activities.
- We did worships and Church services about the Bible verses.
- I
made up a PowerPoint game "Don't Forget the Lyrics - In the Hot Seat"
where the kids took turns to sing the missing words from the songs. -
This turned out to be extremely popular.
- We did karaoke with the songs.
As a result, all the kids passed their test including those who could
barely read.
And so
we have continued to do this every year and last year I started making karaoke videos for the songs.
Click here to download Bible verse songs
Click here to go to our main website for more ideas and resources