Isaiah 1:16-18 and more

First of all, I'm sorry I haven't posted, but we've been super-duper busy!  Grace is two days behind in her Bible Bee study of Jonah.  Melody is right where she belongs (day 5, week 9, if you're keeping track), and Charity is on Day 4, week 10.  Go figure!

I've visualized all the verses using my Scrapbook Max program, and I think they've turned out great!  I'll be showing you a few to help you get some ideas.

While it may look like a foreign language, we call this prompterizing.  It is the first letter of each word.  The pictures help to remember the main ideas as well.  This verse says, "Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean;Put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes. Cease to do evil, Learn to do good; Seek justice, Rebuke the oppressor; Defend the fatherless, Plead for the widow. "Come now, and let us reason together,” Says the Lord, “Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They shall be as wool."  

Here is another example of prompterizing a verse. 

K.T.F. stands for Kind, Tenderhearted, and Forgiving.  Once again, we have just listed the first letter of each word in the verse.  

Hope this gives you a few ideas for memorizing!

Writing out Jonah

Well, this is the first year that we have actually tried to write out the Bible book that we are studying for the summer.  My oldest strongly dislikes writing and I knew it would be a battle with him, so I've always skipped it.  This year, he is teaching 5-Day Clubs with CEF, and the girls and I are working on Bible Bee together.  Bible Bee also came out with handwriting books for the youngest writers with the whole book of Jonah to trace.  My youngest two are working on that.

My 5 year old finished writing the whole book of Jonah during week 7.  She was so excited to be able to finish her whole book.  The other two are both in the second half of Jonah 4.  I'm thankful for the experience and what we've learned not only about Jonah from writing it out, but also about our own character and about perseverance and finishing a task once you start it.

In fact, I've enjoyed it so much, I'm thinking about having each of the children pick a Bible book to write out this year for handwriting in school.  Perhaps before they all graduate, we can have the whole Bible written out!

Here is a video of our 5 year old explaining about our new motivation system for our Jonah Bible study and verses.  She does such a good job with it, I need explain no further.

Some verses visualized

I meant to get more ideas for reviewing verses on here, but unfortunately I haven't been able to post for a while.  Anyhow, I'm back and focusing on Bible Bee verses today.  I went on my Scrapbook Max program and worked up a couple of verses that we need to work on.  Here are the results.

1 Peter 2:1-3

For this verse, I gave a few whole words for clues throughout the verse.  For the rest of the words, I only included the first letter.  I did leave all the punctuation in, because it helps me to know where we are if I see a comma or period in the verse. 

Luke 24:46-47

This time, I decided to delete every other word.  It isn't really challenging to fill in half the words, but it does make you think about what the verse says and hopefully what it means.  

On the Bible study front, Charity and Melody are on Week 7, Day 2--right where they should be.  Grace is on Week 6, Day 5--just two days behind.  Grace is not behind through any fault of her own.  I have to help her look up verses and read with her, and it is my fault that she is not caught up.  I haven't sat down with her and worked on it like I should have a couple days last week.  For their handwriting, they are all ahead of where they are supposed to be.  

Jonah's Map

I'll post a picture later, but we have a new incentive program for memorizing our verses that I wanted to tell you about.  We made a map of Jonah's travels from the Mediterranean Sea to Nineveh.  After dividing the path into squares, we are coloring them as we learn verses and do our Bible study.

We are all ahead on writing the book of Jonah!  This is the first time we have tried writing the book that we are studying like Bible Bee recommends.  It has been a good experience.  I am thankful that Bible Bee put together a journal with the book printed out to trace for the younger students.  My two youngest are using it and find it very helpful.  I think it has really help them to immerse themselves in Jonah. I can understand better why God commanded the kings of Israel to write their own copy of God's law.  You do notice things when you write it out that are easy to skim over when you are reading it.

I am planning out our school year for next year, and I've decided to let each of the kids choose a Bible book to write out for handwriting.  Hopefully, I can make pages for the younger ones to copy or trace again.  If they choose the book, they will probably be more interested in writing it.  I'll try to choose a book to write as well.  Maybe if we do this for enough years, we will have a complete Bible from our collective efforts!  That's a goal to work towards!

Our big fish is colored in!

Our Big Fish!

Yesterday, we finished coloring in our big fish.  We are so excited!  Now it is time for ice cream sundaes!

Really though, finishing our fish means so much more than that.  As the girls could see that we were getting close to the end, they really got excited about quoting their verses.  On the last day, Melody quoted 10 passages.  How wonderful that she has learned more of God's Word in these starting weeks this summer!  Grace and Charity also put extra work into memorizing and quoting their verses and are doing a great job.  

Hiding God's Word deep in the hearts of our family--that is what Bible Bee, big fish and this summer is really all about.  Speaking of family, our son isn't in Bible Bee this summer because he is teaching with CEF.  However, yesterday, he sat in the living room building with legos, and I heard him singing quietly.  Listening closer, I heard one of this year's Bible Bee verse songs.  Never, Ever, underestimate the power of music!  Praise God!  He is learning more of God's Word without even trying!

Now that our big fish is done, we are working on something new to keep track of our studies and memory work.  I think it is going to be pretty fun, so check back and see what we come up with.

Piers Gorge video

Here is a video I put together of the pictures from our family night at Piers Gorge.  It was a beautiful night, and we all had a lot of fun at the water.  We found minnows and crayfish to watch, had a Bible study and one of us took an accidental dunking!  Making memories centered around God's Word--that's a priority in our family.  This is how it's done!

Big Fish update

Here is our big fish at the end of week 4.  We should finish it this week.  The girls are getting excited about the ice cream sundae party.  We've decided to make homemade ice cream!  Now we just have to agree on the flavor.  What is your favorite kind of ice cream?

Bible Bee Family Night

We had our third Bible Bee family night last night.  We combined the second and third week discussions, since we missed week two.  This week, the weather was beautiful, and we went to a local rapids that we like to hike at.  We didn't do much hiking this time though.  Instead we ate a picnic in the parking lot, sharing it with thousands of mosquitoes.  We ate fast and swatted faster!  Then we hiked back to some flat rocks in the river, had our Bible study and played on the rocks.  Grace discovered that wet rocks really are slippery!

I love this picture of my husband!  It is as though light from Heaven is shining over his shoulder on the Bible.  Pretty neat!

Mirror, mirror on the wall

Well, it is hard to take pictures of a mirror, but here is the best of my shots.  We were given a set of window markers, and they work great to write on the mirror.  I wrote Matthew 28:19-20 on our hall mirror.  I wrote near the bottom of the mirror, so that it was on eye-level with my youngest children.  This catches their eye whenever they walk by and they read through a few words or all of the verse.  Either way, it is getting the verse into their thoughts little by little and helps with those 100 repetitions that we are aiming for.  Just another idea for reviewing your Bible verses to get them into that long-term memory.

Big Fish update

Here is our big fish at the end of week one.  The girls are having so much fun coloring him in day by day, and he is becoming beautifully attired.  If we work hard, we may finish him this week or next week.

Keeping up

I haven't posted much lately, because my son is going away for a week and a half for training with Child Evangelism Fellowship for summer missions.  I've never had one of my children leave alone for so long, and it took a lot of time to get him ready to go.  And now he is off and the house seems awful quiet.

We are pretty much keeping up with our Bible Bee studies, though we are a little behind on the verses.  I hope to catch up this week.  We missed our family bonfire this week, but we'll combine it with the next one.

A fun way to review verses we already know is to have one person say the verse and then stop randomly.  The next person has to pick the verse up where the first person left off and then they can stop whenever they feel like it.  You can repeat the same verse or the person who finishes one verse can start the next one.  We have found this to be a great game in the car.

We have also been quoting a verse together when we sit down to eat a meal as a chance to get an extra review in.  The more times you can review a verse, the better chance you have of getting it into your long term memory so you will still have it five or ten years from now.

I'm looking for IDEAS?

I've shown a few ways that we have used to memorize and review memory verses.  We are learning these in our family for Bible Bee, but you could do most of these with a Sunday School class, youth group, family devotions, Bible club or many other activities.  I'll be sharing many more ways in the weeks to come, so be sure to check back for lots of memory review ideas!

I'm curious now.  What are some ways that you memorize verses?  Share your ideas in the comments section below so others can use those suggestions.  Thanks!

1 Thessalonians 5:11-13

Here is a fun activity that we did to try to learn 1 Thessalonians 5:11-13.  I think it would be more fun if you already basically knew the verse and just needed some review.

We wrote the verse reference on top.  Then we wrote the first letter of each word in the verse, changing sidewalk chalk colors after each punctuation mark.  This divided it into four sections.  You could make any shape you wanted to.  We made a square that we started on the outside and worked our way in a kind of spiral to the middle.  It was fun to walk through.  Warning: if you do a spiral, you may be dizzy by the time you get to the end of the verse!  I was.  The girls weren't.  Guess I'm getting old!

"Big Fish" update

Here is a slightly fuzzy picture of our Big Fish.  As you can see, he is starting to get filled up.

The girls went to a VBS at a friend's church this week.  It was three hours each afternoon with verses to learn for it, so it was kind of a rough week for Bible Bee.  We are one day behind, but I hope to catch up tomorrow, even though it is Father's Day.

2 Chronicles 14:11

I made visuals for 2 Chronicles 14:11 to help my girls learn the verse.  To make this, I used free coloring pages that I found online for the background pictures.  I used these websites:

http://www.supercoloring.com/
http://printablecolouringpages.co.uk/
www.thekidzpage.com
www.coloring.ws

When I found a picture I liked, I then used Scrapbook Max to make the visuals.  This is a program that I bought for homeschool projects several years ago, and we have enjoyed it since then.  I'm sure you could use a different program or just print the pictures and write the verse on by hand.

So after I printed these pages up, I cut them out and, of course, covered them with contact paper.  (I should own stock in their company!)  Now we can practice arranging them in the right order, or taking them away as we say the verse (first time-all of them are showing, turn one over with each recitation and see if you can remember it).  

Bible Bee Family Night

We had our Week One family night last night.  Hubby grilled hotdogs and we sat around the bonfire in the back yard.  We prayed together, talked about what we have studied, and prayed for one another.  We quoted verses to each other and showed daddy what we have learned.  We read the Bible together.  Hubby and I sat on a swing by the fire and talked while the young ones played on the swingset and sandbox.  It was fun.  It was making memories around our family and our Bibles, the kind of memories I want to pass on to my grandchildren.  I'm so thankful for a husband who takes time to gather us like this and make these memories with his family.

Anyway, enough of the sentiment.  What did we learn last week?  My girls know the geography of Jonah, the names of the towns mentioned and the general location on the map.  The know the characters of Jonah: Jonah, Amittai, sailors, captain, Ninevites, king.  Oh, and a fish.  A big one.  We discussed the power and sovereignty of  God in the lives of people and in nature.

My husband hasn't done any of the study, but the parent's guide from Bible Bee helped him know exactly what questions to ask to bring out the answers from the children.  He feels like he is completely a part of it, even though he mostly just joins us on the family activities.  Bible Bee has done a great job with the parent's book to enable dads to take part with a minimum of time, because most dads I know just don't have time to add another study to their full workload.

Our Sword Study, Bible, and verse cards

"Big Fish" update

Here is our big fish after week one.  He is starting to get pretty.  The rule is that you can't fill in a scale with the color of any of the scales that touch it.  You get to fill in a scale if you do your Bible study, write your verses for the day, or quote one of this year's verses with less two or fewer helps.  The girls are doing a great job with it.

Psalm 115:1-3

Here is a video that we put together to help us memorize Psalm 115:1-3.  The girls love to watch themselves, so this is a fun way to memorize verses.  I'm hoping to make a collection on my computer and put them together, so we can just turn it on and watch to review our verses.  I hope you enjoy watching this!

Psalm 145:8-9

As we've been working on our memory verses this week, this was one of the main ones that we worked on.  We learn our verses in the New King James Version, but the idea would work for any version.  Basically, if you break these two verses down, the consist of a list of God's attributes.  The LORD followed by four qualities; the The LORD followed by two qualities.  We made this craft with the verse to hang in the kitchen.  I found out it was hard for the girls to tie the knots, so I ended up pretty much making this by myself.  We enjoyed the process though.  I left out the connecting words to force the girls to come up with part of the verse on their own even when they were looking at this.

I also made two more copies of each of these phrases on cardstock for a memory game.  The girls mix them up and flip them all over.  Then they take turns looking for matches by flipping two cars over.  If you find a match, you keep going.  After three matches, it is the next person's turn.  After all the matches have been found, they have to put the two sets in order.  This really helps them to become familiar with the verse and gives them a game to play and a cooperative activity.

My hope is that this verse will take a place of permanent residence in my daughter's hearts.  Read through this verse.  Think about what our God is like!  Gracious, full of compassion, slow to anger, great in mercy, good to all, His tender mercies are over all His works--how blessed we are to know this LORD!

Preserving our Verse Cards

Bible Bee prints the verse cards on the last couple of pages of the study book.  You tear them out, separate them, and use them to study the memory verses.  The problem with this is that we don't sit still at the table to do our studying.  We study in the van, on the playground, in bed, by the bonfire,--well, you get the idea.  Therefore, we have a tendency to bend, tear, stain or otherwise destroy our verse cards!  I'm just as guilty of this as the kids, by the way.

So I took all of our cards today and covered them with clear contact paper.  Then I punched holes in the corners and put them on key rings to make them harder to lose (or easier--lose one, lose them all!).  Here is a picture of what they looked like when they were done.

Bible Bee has 24 passages for us to learn this summer.  That's 47 verses total.  We'll be carrying these around a lot this summer to be able to keep reviewing them and really get them into our hearts for the long run.  

Bible Bee is a competition.  It lasts the summer.  But for our family, Bible Bee is so much more than that!  It is a chance to get the Bible into our hearts in a fun way, knowing that hundreds of other kids and parents are working on these same verses.  There is something about working on a project with someone that is encouraging, even if you don't even know who all those other people are.  

Bible memory and study is a priority in our home, even though we're busy with a zillion other things (see my other blog, Simplifying My Days, if you want to know what those other things are).  It's part of living in light of eternity.  I'm reading a book by Warren W. Wiersbe right now, and I came across a great thought.  We need to be living in the future tense.  My newest life phrase!

Our "Big Fish"

Here is a picture of the fish I made for Bible Bee this summer.  It is made from a big piece of cardboard I had in the basement.  I drew the fish and cut it out with a utility knife.  Then I just drew the face and scales on and then numbered each scale.  I ended up with 173 scales.

I took this picture on Monday after we finished our first day's lesson and verse writing.  The plan is to color a scale for each day's lesson completed, each verse written, and each verse quoted.  When the whole fish is colored in, we get to have an ice cream sundae party!  I'll try to post a picture of our progress each weekend.

Are you doing a special motivational activity to mark your progress in Bible Bee this summer?  I would love to hear about it!  Leave a comment below!

Day 1

June 1:  We opened our Bible Bee box at midnight last night.  Jonah is the book we are studying this summer!  At dinner last night, we were guessing what book it would be, and nothing from the OT got on our list.  We were all wrong!

I think it will be very fun to study Jonah this summer.  It will also be easy to think of crafts and ideas to go with it.  Come on, fish, boats, water, plants that die from lack of water (I'm sure my garden can illustrate that one for us!)--what an adventure!

This is our fifth year in the Bible Bee.  My 11 year old and 8 year old daughters are our "official" participants in the Bible Bee this summer.  My 14 year old son will be teaching 5-Day Clubs, so he will not be participating, and the 5 year old is too young.  However, we will ALL actually be participating as much as possible.

We had our first family time today.  They call it a bonfire, but it is just a time when the family does something together and discusses what is being studied.  Bruce brought us to the Menominee River to do our study.  We got through a good portion of it before the mosquitoes got so bad we had to quit!  We ran to the van, had our prayer time there, and came home to watch the Veggie Tales Jonah movie and eat popcorn for dinner (with fruit and cheese--there was a little nutrition!).

The girls all three have different levels of the Bible study.  I didn't get myself a copy because I'll be busy helping them.  They are all going to write the whole book of Jonah, I hope.  We have skipped that part every other year, but we need help with handwriting and they had tracing pages of it for the youngest two.  I really want to do that this summer, but I'm not going to stress about it if it doesn't happen.

I'm really excited about what we are going to learn!  Let the adventure begin!