Memorization, scriptures & poetry

We often hear that children's minds are like sponges, however a sponge eventually gets full, a child's brain expands limitlessly to hold all the knowledge it can. I am constantly amazed at how much my children remember. My two year old has learned to count in Korean simply by attending his brothers' Tae Kwon Do classes. My oldest learned all thirteen articles of faith by age 3 and my middle son learned the entire poem The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost at age 3. Here are the resources I use to help my kids memorize.

Scripture Mastery CD's: There are some great scripture mastery songs you can download for free by The Sons of Ammon. I play them in the car and my boys can sing quite a few of the songs. Ethan can even say Helaman 5:12, quite impressive for a 5 year old, these songs really do work!

Article of Faith CD's: Ethan learned all thirteen articles of faith by age three and all I did was download the articles of faith songs, burn them on a cd and play them each morning during breakfast. You can find them at lds.org under the letter "T". We review them on our way to or from church on Sundays. He actually knows them better than I do. I know all the words to each, but I often get the numbers mixed up and he has to set me straight.

Scripture Memory System: There are other scriptures that I like them to memorize, such as Philipians 4:13 and Joshua 24:15. We try to work on one each month. When they get a bit older we'll use this scripture memory system.

Poetry: I love poetry and want my boys to love it too. Using my iPhone voice recorder I read about 70 poems, particularly ones that would be easy for the boys to memorize, with a few challenges (like The Road Not Taken) and burned them to a cd. We listen to them when we are in the car driving around town and they each have at least 10 poems memorized. One of our favorite poets is Jack Prelutsky. He has some super silly poems for that are perfect for little boys. This is my boys' current favorite, they laugh hysterically each time they hear it.

As Soon as Fred Gets Out of Bed
by Jack Prelutsky

As soon as Fred gets out of bed,
his underwear goes on his head.
His mother laughs, "Don't put it there,
a head's no place for underwear!"
But near his ears, above his brains,
is where Fred's underwear remains.

At night when Fred goes back to bed,
he deftly plucks it off his head.
His mother switches off the light
and softly croons, "Good night! Good night!"
And then, for reasons no one knows,
Fred's underwear goes on his toes.  

A few other favorites are:

Limericks by Edward Lear

The Rhinoceros

How Doth the Little Crocodile

Bed by Day

Wynken Blinken and Nod

I was going to post my audio files online, but since some of the poets are still alive, it might violate some copyright restriction...so if you simply don't have the time to record your own, send me an email and I'll send you my digital files so you can burn your own cd.