Remember and Hear God's Voice

We just created the cover for our Book of Mormon scrapbook so it is fitting to talk about the Creator this week. Here's our scripture for the week:

Believe in God; believe that he is, and that he created all things, both in heaven and in earth; believe that he has all wisdom, and all power, both in heaven and in earth; believe that man doth not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend. Mosiah 4:9

We talked with the children about the many advantages of memorizing scriptures.

#1 It increases your capacity to remember

#2 You become conversant with the scriptures

#3 Your understanding of the passage increases

#4 It makes it easier for the Lord to communicate with you

#5 You can make more connections between verses throughout the scriptures

We gave each child a copy of the scripture so they can practice the verse. Here's a copy of the sheet we printed.

The children are very excited about adding to their Book of Mormon scrapbook. After they memorize the verse, they will trade in their plain copy and get a beautiful 8.5 x 11 colored copy. This can go in their scrapbook. 

Our little seven year old is so excited to get it passed off. She went right to work and had much of it memorized before bedtime. She woke up and wanted to work on it before breakfast.  She had it passed off before she ate.  Our four year old is well on her way to having it memorized.

Helpful Hints:

***Be positive, be positive, be positive. Show your excitement with each attempt.  Celebrate what went well when reciting the verse by memory.  Be encouraging.  Give high fives, knuckles, thumbs up, smiles, and other encouraging gestures.

***Talk about the verse with your child.  Ask them questions to see if they understand what they've read. Here are some of the questions we asked our children: Do you believe in God? What has God created?  Do you know what it means to have "wisdom"? What does God have power to do? Do you know what it means to "comprehend" all things? Why can the Lord comprehend things you can't comprehend?

***Explain the meaning of some of the words to your child.

• wisdom -  the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment

• comprehend -  understand

• doth - does

***Make up actions to go along with the words of the scripture. Practice the actions while reading the scripture.  When the children are passing off the scripture, you can use the actions to help them remember a word if they get stuck. For the final pass-off, I have them do it without any clues or hints, but I give clues and hints when they are in the process of memorizing.

***Take a closer look at the verse and ask questions.  Here are a few examples: How many times do you see the word "believe"? Take a crayon and underline each "believe". How many times do you see "both in heaven and in earth"? Take a different color crayon and underline each "both in heaven and in earth". How many times do you see the word comprehend? Take another color and underline each "comprehend". Take another color and circle all the words that describe God.  

***Read the scripture 10 times before attempting to recite the verse without looking at the paper.  Make a tally mark each time the verse is read.  

***When the scripture is almost memorized, there are usually forgotten words or phrases. As you listen to your child, circle the forgotten words so your child can go back and focus on those parts.

***We only get to memorize one scripture a week to put in our binder.  Don't wear a good thing out even if they are really excited to put many scriptures in their binder.  They get to look forward to getting one beautiful scripture each week.

***Have fun with this.  New exciting ideas will come to mind; use them. That is the Lord speaking to you and helping you teach your child.  He knows what will bring joy to your child.  God will help you with the important responsibility to bring up your children in light and truth. 

***Use the suggestions that work for your family.  These hints are only to help you see possibilities.  You may use all, some, or none of these ideas.  That's okay.