Proverbs, Verses, and Catechism
Every morning, our first order of business is learning God’s Word.
Proverbs
There are 31 Proverbs in the Bible and, often, 31 days in a month.
Monday-Friday, we read the proverb that corresponds with that day of the month. By the end of the year, we’ve read all the proverbs multiple times.
We do:
Pray that God will help us understand and apply his word.
Stay as consistent as possible.
Let the Holy Spirit speak to each child.
Point out, very rarely, if one verse applies to a situation our family currently experiencing.
We do not:
Preach during Morning Time.
Point at each child and say, “Did you hear that? God says you’re being foolish!”
Play “catch up” and read extra if we missed a day.
Ambleside Online recommends King James Version, but our family uses ESV and CSV because we prefer them.
Bible Verses
We use two tools for deciding which Bible Verses to memorize. Both are from Truth:78
Foundation Verses – Desiring God used to sell small flip books with short Bible verses for young people to memorize. Now they are available through Truth:78.
Fighter Verses – Longer sections of scripture for older children and adults, also available through Truth:78.
We just read a few verses daily until most of us have memorized the verse. The memorized verses switch to “weekly” and we move on to more verses.
In theory, the joy of learning God’s word is a reward in itself. In practice, especially with my kids, a tangible reward helps. We buy small gifts from FiveBelow and when the kids memorize as many verses as they are old. (So the 7 year old gets a prize when he learns 7 verses.)
Catechism
Learning the catechism has been a great tool for my children to internalize truths about God.
Our family chose New City Catechism. They have a plethora of resources to help your family incorporate this tool in your morning time routine.
We used New City Catechism in our Sunday School a few years ago. It was amazing to see the children and teens make connections learn about God in this orderly, logical way.
We use the pdf that someone created. It does have a few typos but it would be too much work for me to redo the whole thing to add in missing a word or two so we use it as is. Plus, it’s free.
There’s also an app for you phone so you can work on your catechism on the go.
We learn the questions in the same way that we do the Bible Verses. Starting with Q1-Q5, we read them daily. As they get memorized, they move to a weekly rotation. At the end, we should be about to answer about 10 questions per day and get through the whole thing in a week.