Mega Memory Month Update

This is the last Monday for Mega Memory Month, but I have until Friday to work on this passage. I'm pleased with the progress I've made, and I'm even more pleased with the way the children are writing the Word on their hearts. Our only strategy for memorizing this passage has been to read it (almost) every morning a few times, and to try saying it once we thought we knew it - or parts of it. There was no drill of difficult sections, there was no constant repeating of phrases. There was simply abiding with the passage in its entirety for the whole time we were working on it. And it worked!

Now, I'm not sure that it would be as effective a strategy with a long passage (like the book of Philippians, for example), but maybe to break that long passage into several smaller, yet still significant parts would work. It was certainly more enjoyable for me to do it this way than to do one or two verses at a time and tack on new ones as we mastered them.

So, you can expect to see one more Mega Memory Month post on Friday(ish) when I'll give the final rundown on the project and what we do for a culminating activity.

But before I go, here's the Parable of the Vineyard as I was able to do it this morning:

For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.

About the third hour he went out and saw others standing around in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, "You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right." So they went.

He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing. About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, "Why have you been standing here in the marketplace all day long doing nothing?"

"Because no one has hired us," they answered.
He said to them, "You also go and work in my vineyard."

When evening came the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, "Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first."

The workers who were hired at the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. "These men who were hired last worked only one hour," they said, "and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day."

But he answered one of them, "Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?"

So the last will be first, and the first will be last.

Matthew 20:1-16