Verse Memory Tool – Memory Icons

 

There is a resource available for T&T to help children memorize God’s Word. It is called Memory Icons and was developed by a homeschool mom to help their child who struggled with the Awana T&T verses and wanted to quit Awana.

I reviewed some of the available verses and files and I personally liked what I saw. I see this as a great resource for clubbers struggling to learn verses, those who are more visual learners as well as possibly special needs children to help them learn and excel.

Below are her comments about how this project started….

“Mom, I don’t want to go to Awana anymore.” Words no mother wants to hear. The care, Christ-centered teaching, scripture learning, and fun interactions are what Awana Clubs is about. So why the change in my “once cute Cubbie’s” heart to not want to be a part of this anymore?

She was 8 years old and had just begun at the first Truth & Training level. The amount of scripture memorization increased, and this became so overwhelming that she was willing to toss all the fun and fellowship aside.

Well, this is where I need to give God the credit, because He brought to mind something, which I learned while getting my degree in psychology years before – the concept of mnemonics (helpful tricks for memorizing). One of these tricks being the use of pictures to create words, including associations, whenever possible, which increased ones recall ability.

So after acknowledging my daughter’s valid frustration, I got out a pencil, paper and her Awana book, and started to draw. Each word was drawn in a different manner, but the same words were drawn the same each time. If there was some association the word had with the object it represented, I would draw it in. So the word “cross” was a picture of a cross. “Jesus” was a bearded man, “then” was a “T” and a picture of a hen.

My daughter studied the pictures (now termed icons) and to our surprise, she was able to memorize with greater ease.

Week after week, I would draw out the verses. The leader of my daughter’s T & T group thought they were fantastic and so helpful, and looked forward to seeing what was drawn that week. The scriptures were passed around to others who needed help too.

Fast-forward about two years and over 1,100 hand–drawn icons later, I finally put them into verse order, compiling them into downloadable e-books of each T & T book.

With the purchase of copyright approval from both the New International Version Bible holding company and Awana itself, the website is created and the books are made available to other kids who are struggling and overwhelmed with scripture memorization. To God be the glory for bringing this project to fruition, and may no parent ever hear these words again, “I don’t want to go to Awana anymore”.

Do you have children struggling to learn the verses in the T&T handbooks? You may want to take a look at these resources and see if they help your clubbers excel and be excited about Awana and learning God’s Word again.

Click here to visit the Memory Icon website, get samples and see how it might benefit your club.