Learning the 10 Commandments

As Gess is getting older we thought it was important to stress having some personal devotion time. I think she needs to know that she can pray and study God's Word anytime she chooses. We always begin her day learning something in the Bible together. Then I have her write and meditate on the portion of Scripture that was the focus for the day. Since she was doing some written work each day we thought it would be good to have a place to keep it all together so that could look it over later and remember what she has studied so far. So we made made her a notebook and titled it My Devotional and keep it with her bible.



One of our early lessons this year was to memorize the 10 commandments. I recalled that Living Waters had a great resource for helping kids to memorize them so I went to their site and downloaded their 10 Commandments Learning Aids. They use these images to help tie the number to the actual commandment. They have a full presentation but here is the sheet with just the visual aids.


The 10 Commandments Flip Chart is the presentation that helps you tie each picture in.

1. God should always be Number One. (#1 ribbon)
2. Don't bow to anything but God. (person bowing shaped as 2)
3. Don't use your lips to dishonor God. (lips in shape of 3)
4. Don't neglect the things of God. (Bible and spider web make 4)
5. It's a 5 shaped like a mother and father to remind you to honor them.
6. It's a bomb shaped like a 6 for don't murder.
7. Adultery leaves a broken heart. (crack in heart makes a 7)
8. The thief's mask looks like an 8 for don't steal.
9. The number nine is "lying" down for don't lie.
10. The door and ring together look like a 10 for don't covet.

Gess does really well with visuals and adding the hands on element made learning the 10 Commandments easy and fun. We started by learning one commandment each school day. She would read the verse from the bible and then copy it in her journal. Then I had her glue the image to the bottom of the page.




Each day we would add a new verse but we would also review the other verses by matching the verse to the picture. By the time we were done she was pretty good at getting them all correct.





After 10 days of practicing she was pretty good at it. Now it was time to see if she could do it without the visual aids. Does she actually know the 10 Commandments?



And you know what? She did it!