It is more than possible to teach your Sunday School students bible verses or stories that require them to rely only on their memory. However by using puzzles to reinforce the memory work you will find that your class not only remembers the weekly verse, but also enjoys learning it. The best thing as far as your concerned is that creating these puzzles takes very little time and effort. It’s even possible to find them online if you prefer to use a printable created by someone else and easily downloaded free from the Internet.
If you choose to create your own puzzles, think about the age group of your students. Some puzzles such as filling in a missing letter in some words of the bible verse or having the main words of the verse in a format that can be colored as the children learn are appropriate for younger children. Older children however can be given such puzzles as code breaking where you assign a number to each letter of the alphabet, supply a clue as to how the code can be broken (such as giving the students 2 or 3 letters with their numbers so that they can start to decode the bible verse) and then allow them to work out the verse from there.
Alternatively if you are using a bible story, then your puzzles can take the form of quizzes with multiple choices answers or even word searches. Older children may also enjoy more visual puzzles where you supply one student with a name of a biblical person connected to your story. Then the other students have to ask questions to discover who the mystery person is – the rule is that all questions can only be yes or no answers!
Although memorizing bible verses through traditional methods is effective for many children, the use of puzzles and even games can help to bring these passages to life. If bible verse memory work is part of your Sunday School curriculum you could always do this as a “homework” activity and give the children the verse they’ve been working on in class on a printed bookmark, or have them copy it down on paper so they can learn it and be able to recite it in class at the beginning of the next session.
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