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Tea Time and Scripture Memory

Tea time looks a bit different than when we first started a couple of weeks ago.  In all honesty, it really should not be called Tea Time any longer as there is no tea involved (unless it is for me) and the special tea cups have gone away.  Really, though, I expected as much.  Little Buddy enjoyed the novelty of the tea cups and saucers at the beginning, but the special-ness of them wore off.  He now prefers his sippy cup, but he knows that he can have the glass ones if he wants them (and wants to be careful).

So, what are we doing now?  It's become part of our routine now that at 3 o'clock we have juice and cookies.  We sit around the table, enjoy our drinks, and have some special devotional time with our family.  Most of the time, daddy is able to take his short afternoon break at this time so he will read the boys a story from our Jesus Storybook Bible.  This doesn't take very long, so now we've added doing memory verses and hymns while we finish up our snacks.  I love that I've finally found a good time to do devotions together.  Mornings are just too hectic with our varied sleep schedules.

I'm excited about helping Little Buddy memorize some Bible verses.  It's been a topic of discussion recently on the yahoo group that I've joined for those with preschoolers who are interested in doing Ambleside Online curriculum in the future.  I really like the idea of a slow start with memorization, and not drilling the kids on getting verses memorized.  Instead, I've chosen a short Psalm to read to them after our Bible story is over.  I read the Psalm a few times before closing in our hymn for our week (month?).  Sometimes, I purposefully leave words out of the Psalm for Little Buddy to fill in, but mostly, I think he will familiarize himself with the passage just by hearing it over and over.  (I can't tell you how many board books the kid has memorized!)

Once we have a few verses memorized, we plan on using Simply Charlotte Mason's Scripture Memory System.  Basically, it helps you not only learn new verses by going over them every day, but it also makes it easy to review verses you've already memorized.  SCM also has a great list of Bible passages to help you get started if you want to know what to memorize.

Right now, we are learning Psalm 100.  It's a nice introduction to learning chunks of scripture without being very long.  I also love that it is about Thanksgiving.

Since we've been trying to spend more time outdoors, we've been singing This Is My Father's World.  I love this hymn.

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