I can tell you I have very few Bible verses committed to memory and I think my kids have even fewer. This is an area that I think we fall short on compared to our Protestant brothers and sisters. How could we add that to our daily lives?
I sat in Mass before the New Year, and our priest was talking about the importance of spending time as a family reading scripture. I started wondering how I could make this easier for my own family to read the Bible and start memorizing verses. How could I help other teachers and parents? The wheels started turning as I started brainstorming how to make this possible so that families actually spend the time reading Bible verses together.
Introducing the Catholic Bible Verses for the Year Activities
The Catholic Bible Verses for the Year Activities is a simple, effective solution designed to help Catholic families and classrooms incorporate scripture reading into their routines with ease and minimal time commitment. Each week features a new verse from the Catholic Bible (NABRE), offering meaningful opportunities to read, reflect, and grow in faith as a family or class.
How It Works
- Start Each Week with a Verse: Every week, you’ll introduce a new verse from the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE), the same translation used during Catholic Mass. Read the verse aloud, and use the included discussion questions to explore its meaning.
- Display the Verse: Printable posters are included to display the weekly verse in your home or classroom, ensuring it’s seen and reflected on throughout the week.
- Interactive Activities: Dive into fun, hands-on activities that help kids engage with the verse, such as puzzles, handwriting practice (in print and cursive), doodling, and sketching. These activities make learning scripture enjoyable and memorable.
- Memorization Made Easy: If your goal is to help kids memorize Bible verses, these activities provide frequent exposure to the scripture verse, encouraging repetition and reinforcement until the verse is committed to memory.
What’s Included?
This comprehensive resource contains everything you need to teach 52 verses from the Catholic Bible, including:
- Verses from both the Old and New Testaments
- Thought-provoking discussion questions for each verse
- Printable posters for display
- Handwriting pages for each verse (print and cursive)
- Puzzles that reinforce learning
- Doodle and sketch pages to inspire creativity
- “Draw about, write about” pages for reflection
- Cut-and-glue activities to help kids put the verse’s words in order
How can I use this in my home or classroom?
2. Use the discussion questions to start talking about the meaning of the verse and connecting it to your own lives. Depending on the ages of the children you are using this with, you could do all 5 questions or maybe just do one or two a day and come back to it throughout the week.
3. Print the poster on colored paper or have a child color it. Hang it in a high traffic area where it will be seen throughout the week.
- Hole punch and put on a ring to use as a reference throughout the year
- Tape to mirrors, lockers, cubbies, the car dashboard, the fridge, etc.
- Put in lunchboxes
- Use as a bookmark throughout the week
- Glue into a prayer journal
5. Throughout the week, revisit the verse. Finish any discussion questions. If you don't feel confident in an answer, just do a quick Google search, but many of them are opinions and ideas of how the child can connect to the verse.
6. As needed throughout the week, use the extra activities that are appropriate for the age group you have. There is no requirement to do all of them. But the more time they spend with the verse, the easier it will be to memorize.
8. Start the next week with another verse from scripture.
9. Repeat each week.
A Faith-Filled Routine That Fits Your Schedule
Verses can be practiced for homework, in the car on the way to extra curricular activities, before bed, etc. These Bible lessons are meant to be short and the printable Bible verse activities shouldn't take a lot of time either.
