Free Download: Matthew 5 Memory Cards

As mentioned in previous posts (here), we began using this Charlotte Mason inspired Bible memory system at the beginning of the 2020/21 school year, and it has for the most part worked gloriously. It's not that we weren't memorizing things in years past, but they weren't getting reviewed or even really recorded. Now we have a systemic, sustainable way to look back at what we've committed to memory, even months ago. 

Of course I still haven't been terribly methodical about What we memorize. For a while I grabbed things out of what we were learning at church, interspersed with verses that spoke to what I felt I or the family was going through. Anyway, in February I got a wild hare to have the kids memorize The Sermon on the Mount. I'd tackled that project maybe 20 years back, so it is very familiar to me, which makes it much easier to teach. And having a big chunk to work on simplified lots of other things as well. I definitely recommend it. *

Anyway, we reached a milestone last week (the 3rd week in May): We finished Matthew 5, which is 48 verses long. So that was about 12 weeks, and an average of 4 verses per week. This is a sustainable pace for our family. When I realized we'd hit the milestone I decided to spend this week on review with the end goal that each child could recite the whole chapter with minimal hints or correction. My oldest had already achieved this by Wednesday; the two girls were done Thursday. I've promised frozen yogurt with toppings from the local shop as a reward!

I thought perhaps others might find our memorization materials useful, which is the real purpose of this increasingly rambling post.

Linked here are the 48 verses ** of Matthew 5 in NIV in roughly 4 verse chunks, on printable "index cards." There is a full copy, a single-letter copy (great for review) and a partial deletion w/ first letter copy (great for mid-week practice.)  

Half-way through the project I switched from asking the kids to do copy-work on the too small cards to asking them to draw something memorable from the passage instead. The youngest (8) loves this. The others usually don't bother and I don't push them.

To use the memory, print out one copy of the memory card for each student. Trim around all four edges of the cards, then cut lengthwise, leaving the full copy and single letter copy joined in the center, and the drawing and partial deletion cards joined as well. Fold in half. They should be just the right size to fit in your 3x5 card box. (See this post for more info)

Most of the passages also have a cursive handwriting sheet. Using those is pretty obvious. 

I used the free generator at worksheetworks.com to make the handwriting practice pages. This is a great resource and I highly recommend it.

There ARE errors in this package - the occasional miss on the single letter card ***, the more frequent mistakes in reference labels on the secondary cards. But they're usable, and you may certainly fix or tweak to your own specifications. 

 

* The Charlotte Mason system is perhaps not Perfect for memorizing long chunks of scripture. The nature of the review process is such that you will not be working in order most of the time. Is this a big deal? I decided it was not nearly problematic enough to justify tweaking our working box system. But it could be done. The details are left as an exercise to the reader. ;) 

** Actually, the first 2 verses are missing, mostly because I did not want to kick off the whole project by boring myself and the kids with scene setting, nor did I want to try and memorize 6 verses in the first week. We did add those two verses this week. I would do it the same way were I to do it again. 

*** As it turns out I have a very expensive degree in computer science that is gathering dust in the here and now as I pursue the much more important task of raising my children and caring for my family. I have it in my head to create a program that accepts a passage of scripture and generates the index cards with partial deletion and single letter practice pages automatically. Algorithmically it's not very difficult, but there are a handful of unknowns that could really cause trouble. Most dauntingly I have no clue what it takes to generate a PDF, which would be the most obvious output format. "Someday" I hope to pick it up. (Maybe when I decide to push my eldest into some programming practice?) For now it's much faster to do the job by hand once a week!