I am all about kids people memorizing Bible verses. In fact, we spend a good chunk of our small group time each week working on a verse with the 4th graders. But, as per the curriculum, we are currently working our way through Isaiah 53, which has more than a few words and phrases that the kids are not familiar with - as well as a mind bending habit of mixing metaphors and going on "rabbit trail" verses.
They each go home at the start of the month with a verse sheet like the one below, with definitions on the bottom of the page (dictionary definitions simplified and translated into 4th grader speak, because, it is very uniquely frustrating to look up a definition and find out that you are going to have to look up another definition, just to figure out what the first one meant).
By no means, though, does that mean that they actually read the definitions on their own. So, we define the crazy words at Sunday school. One of the ways that we do that is to assign 2+ children as "researchers." Those researchers use the page to "look up" any words that the rest of the class is confused about.
They love being the ones disseminating the information, and I love that they are practicing finding the answers for themselves.
(Other weeks we might let the kids guess as to what the crazy words mean - they are often remarkably good at hunting down related or root words - or we jump right in with some sort of crazy teacher definition. Totally depends on the words and how familiar/foreign they are to that week's group of kids.)
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