Homeschooling: Bible and Repetition

I’m not sure why I didn’t learn what I needed to know several months ago. The day when I decided I was going to teach Lily The Lord’s Prayer. We had already been using breakfast time to read God’s Word aloud and a time to open our day with prayer. But Mommy had the good idea of working on some scripture memorization. What better place to begin than the Lord’s Prayer? So, I sat her down on the couch, explained what we were going to do, and said, “Repeat after me…”

“Our Father which art in heaven…” Awaiting her answer back…and then she didn’t repeat after me, she said… “Hallowed be thy name.” We continued the rest of the prayer this way. I closed my Bible and thought that was easy enough. Lily had been hearing the Lord’s Prayer for almost a year each Sunday morning during church. Little did I know she was not only listening…but learning!

We continued on with our regular routine until about six weeks ago when Mommy again had a great idea! I will teach her a commandment a week during breakfast time. So off we went reading Exodus 20:1-17 each morning and eventually added a chapter from Leading Little One’s to God. Week 1, I would emphasize Commandment 1…and so on.

She was doing well learning the commandments until about week 5 or 6. She started “stubbing up” and not wanting to answer my questions when I would ask. I knew she knew who the commandments were given to and how many commandments there were and each commandment we had learned. Why was she refusing to answer? One afternoon we decided to address the issue with Daddy.

We started going through our basic questions and as we got to “You shall not murder.” She continued… “You shall not commit adultery.” I glanced at him with a look of amazement and a bit of confusion. We had not learned that yet! And then I decided to try something…we went through the entire scripture of Exodus 20:1-17 that we had read each morning for the past few weeks. I would leave out words and even phrases and she would fill in the blanks! My three year old nearly had the entire passage of the Ten Commandments memorized by hearing me read them!

All of this time I had been fretting that she wasn’t learning the way I wanted her to. She wasn’t answering the questions that I wanted her to answer. But behind the scenes, at least as far as I could see, God was doing His work. She was learning through her own eyes and experiencing His Word for herself the way He wanted her to. And while doing so, He was showing me my worries and anxieties of not being enough would be met by Him. Again, I needed to quite relying on myself and trust that He will equip me for what He has called me to do.

“What is required of us is, that we should implant a love of the Word; that the most delightful moments of the child’s day should be those in which his mother reads for him, with sweet sympathy and holy gladness in voice and eyes, the beautiful stories of the Bible” ~Charlotte Mason