The Well Versed Family: Review & Giveaway!

Lately, I’ve been feeling really convicted about teaching the Little Farmhands to memorize scripture.  Here at the Good Old Days farm we focus a lot on being physically healthy, but it is just as important to be spiritually healthy, too!  The Little Farmhands know tons and tons of Bible verses set to music… I know for a fact that the oldest Farmhand knows at least 150 scriptures set to music (We have some great CD’s that I’ll be telling you about later this week!)… but if anyone ever asked them what a certain verse says, they would have to sing the answer.  That’s good and we will continue to learn scripture songs, but they’re ready for the next step!

So for the next week and a half or so we are going to have a Scripture Memory Theme here on the Good Old Days Farm blog!  I’ll be sharing some excellent resources that have really helped our family to imprint scripture in our minds and hearts.  I’ll also share some of our favorite tools and techniques for memorizing as well as suggest some Bible Verses to help you and your family get started!



I’ve known it was important for my children to memorize scripture, but for some reason it never occurred to me that this is something we should do together as a family.  I stumbled across Caroline Boykin’s book “The Well-Versed Family” while looking for resources to help me teach my children.  Just as the subtitle “raising kids of faith through do-able scripture memory” promises, this book makes scripture memory do-able!  It was just what I needed to get started!

Caroline Boykin makes a compelling case in the first half of her book for the need to memorize scripture.  I love the title of the first chapter!  “What’s Down in the Well, Comes Up in the Bucket!”  She gets this title from Proverbs 4:23 “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.”  Poorly guarded and polluted wellsprings (hearts and minds) leave our children defenseless against temptation.  She outlines many benefits to memorizing scripture and shows exactly how memorizing helps us to know God.  You will be inspired and challenged by Boykins’ vision for making Scripture memory a passion rather than just another project or (as she puts it) “a holy hobby”!

The second half of “The Well-Versed Family” is full of practical tips to help children memorize.  Suggestions like coming alongside your child and memorizing the scriptures with them have changed the way our family approaches memorizing!  She also gives suggestions for incentives, review techniques and helping children to understand what the verses actually mean.  She includes memory verse games and activities (such as Bible verse card games and games like “verse scramble” and “I Spy…. a verse!”), 84 scripture memory cards on perforated pages (yay!  Because I always have a hard time knowing which verses to pick to get started!) and 5 simple, but very memorable family devotions explaining how scripture memory relates to real life.

One of my favorite parts of the book is when she talks about visiting her grandparents when she was about 9 years old.  They had a goal to help her and her sister memorize 100 verses from the Bible.  One hundred verses sounds like a lot (and it is more than many people memorize in a lifetime!) but they did it!  Boykin talks about what a wonderful gift those verses were and how now that her grandparents are deceased, those verses continue to bless her. It inspired me to give the same gift to my children! 

“The Well-Versed Family” was easy to read (even for this sometimes sleep-deprived mommy!), but hard to put down.  If you are considering starting (or reviving!) a scripture memory program in your home, I strongly recommend this book!

You can read more about “The Well-Versed Family” (including testimonials about how this book has inspired other families!) by visiting the Well-Versed Family website or preview it on Amazon. 

You can purchase “The Well-Versed Family” at Tate Publishing for $12.99 for the paperback edition and $7.99 for the ebook downloadable edition, or you can purchase it through Amazon for $12.73

Or

Win an autographed copy of “The Well-Versed Family”!
Caroline has donated a copy for one of our blog readers!
To enter, do any (or all) of the following.  If you do more than one, leave a separate comment for each entry:

• Spread the word!  Post about this giveaway on Facebook and leave a comment here telling me
• Tweet about this giveaway on Twitter and leave a comment here telling me you did so.
• Blog about this giveaway for 2 entries.  Leave two comments here with the link.
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• “Follow” us through Google Friend Connect (link on right sidebar) and leave a comment here
  
• Subscribe to this blog via email (link on right sidebar) and tell me about it here
  
• Leave a comment suggesting a Bible verse or passage you think would be good for a family to memorize together!  (I will compile all the suggestions and post it for everyone to share so please try to pick a verse that hasn’t already been suggested!)

Giveaway closes at midnight on April 12, 2011.  Open to US Residents Only.  Please be sure to leave a way for me to contact you if you win!
This is not a paid review,  It is my personal opinion based on reading “The Well-Versed Family.”  A big thank you to Caroline Boykin for donating a copy of the book for the review and the giveaway!