No matter what stage of learning your children are working through, if you help your them develop a Scripture memory habit now, it will stick with them for the rest of their lives! God will use passages they commit to memory as children to teach and comfort them years later.

Here are a few tips for helping your children – and yourself – establish a Scripture memory habit.

• Start with one verse per week in the Getting Excited stage. Increase to two verses in the Beginning to Understand stage, and try to up it to three verses per week in the Learning to Reason stage.
• Don’t give into the temptation to simplify verses for younger children. This will only cause confusion when they are older and need to memorize the “real” verse. You will be surprised by how well young children can handle whole verses.
• Even for young children, choose a translation they can stick with as they grow older rather than simply going with the easy reading translations that you might choose for reading time. NASB, ESV, and HCSB are great choices for memorization at all ages.
• Naturally work in the Scripture reference by encouraging your child to say it before and after reciting a verse.
• Repeating out loud twice a day goes a long way! Just say the week’s verse together twice out loud, then move on.
• Tie Scripture memory and handwriting or copy work together. Each time a new verse is added, have your child copy it once a day for the first couple of days.
• When memorizing a passage, recite the previous week’s verse(s) before starting the new week’s verse. This helps the whole passage naturally flow together.
• Review frequently! The more you memorize, the harder it will be to keep everything fresh. So, a couple of times a year, choose old verses or passages from previous years to review.