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!