This post is part of Works For Me Wednesday at Rocks In My Dryer. Head over there to see everyone else’s great ideas. You’ll be glad you did.
Scripture memory is important at our house. It began with teaching Christopher the basics of faith and life–Ephesians 6:1, Romans 3:23, Psalm 119:105, John 3:16, etc. Last year, Christopher did AWANAS, a children’s Scripture memory program. Most of the verses were pretty short, and I started coming up with little tunes to help him remember some of the longer verses. After all, Christopher had been able to learn to spell his name at a young age after I came up with a simple jingle. He still sings it to himself as he is writing is name. (Eleven letters is a lot for a 4-year-old. Note to self: Give future children shorter names.)
A year ago, I decided we could all benefit from memorizing the fruits of the Spirit found in Galatians 5:22-23. I had tried in vain to memorize them myself over the years. But when I set the verses to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” it stuck. Christopher can easily remember the song, even if it has been a few months since we reviewed it. I will let him demonstrate:
Now if I could only teach the application of these verses by better living them out, especially in my interaction with my kids!
I’ve also tried setting I Corinthians 13 to “A Mighty Fortress is our God,” but I’m not sure its the best fit. Have you set Bible verses to music for your kids or have another memorization tip? Leave me a comment and tell me about it!
Addendum to original post (7/6/09): Since this post, one primary way I have used to teach Scripture to my kids are the wonderful CDs made by Seeds Family Worship. Visit their site to order CD’s or read posts I have written about them–they are fantastic!
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Great idea. I’m going to try this with my girls.
This is such a good idea. And your son is so cute and obliging. Gal 5:22 is one of the few verses my girls have learnt really well, along with John 3:16. I used to love hearing my 2nd daughter list the fruits of the spirit when she was only 2 or 3! Now my daughters are 8 & 10 I find it so much harder to motivate them to learn verses, or to fit in memorisation in amongst school etc. Teach them while they are young! At least they also learn a lot at Sunday school. We still try and do verses here but we don’t always remember to come back and revise them later on. I once knew a lady who paid her 11yo grandson $5 each week to learn a memory verse. She was rewarded by having him say to her one week “oh grandma, you don’t have to pay me anymore!”
This worked for us when mine were in AWANA. Bravo for helping yours hide God’s word in his heart!
How cute!!
I learned a Fruits of the Spirit Song back when I was in GA’s that I still remember. “A fruit of the spirit’s not a coconut, a fruit of the spirit’s not a coconut. If you wanna be a coconut you might as well hear it, you can’t be a fruit of the spirit. ‘Cause the fruits aaaaaaaaaare…Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness and Self-Controoooool!” We used any fruit you could think of and had lots of motions, so it was fun to sing for a really, really long time.
I like that your version has the reference included though. Even though I remember all the fruits, I can’t remember where in the Bible they are! The only other memorization jingle I know is how to spell yellow to the old Jello jingle with the “w” whispered at the end. Apparently, yellow was a tough one for me to spell.
I am the secretary for our Awana club. Awana has tapes/cds for each of the clubs. For example, if your cubbie is a hopper this year, ask your club secretary to order a hopper cd. All of the verses in the book are set to music for you. We allow our members to order these thru the church and they just pay for them.
This is a really good idea. I just started “Memorizing Monday’s” on my blog to help to motivate me to memorize more scripture. I was in Awana when I was young and it is where I learned so much of the Scriptures that I still remember. Thank you for this post. I am working with my 3 year old son now and this will help me.
Scripture to tunes is GREAT. It works for me personally AND for my kiddos (at home and at school). Check out STeve Green’s Hidem in your Heart CDs. They are great. I love them. YOu can find samples on itunes.
I love it!!! That’s awesome. It’s so much easier for my kids to memorize their scripture verses when set to music. Good Job!!! Thanks….we’ll be singing it next week.