The Best Bible Memory Verse Games for Kids
This article contains great Bible memory verse games to help your kids memorize Scripture and have fun in the process!
Memorizing Bible verses takes effort and can be frustrating for our kids. These memory verse games are sure to help your kids have fun and remember scripture with ease.
God gave us His Word to help us learn about His love for us. He also asks us to lean on His promises and truth in life’s everyday moments. Being a believer isn’t the easiest thing these days, so memorizing scripture is one of the greatest gifts you can give your child. We want to equip our kids with God’s Truth wherever they go and in whatever situation they are in.
Bible verse memory games are the perfect addition for your family devotional time. You will have a blast playing these bible memory verse games as you work to plant seeds for your kids’ faith and grow closer as a family.
Why Bible Memory Verse Games Make Learning Scripture Fun
Sitting down with our children and reading the Bible together is a great way to teach our kids about who God is. We learn through stories, and the Bible is full of stories about things our kids can relate to: animals, babies, weather, friendship … the list goes on. Yes, even the way God planned out his Word speaks to His love for us and His desire for us to know Him!
But just sitting down and reading the Bible with your kids to try to memorize Bible verses can be challenging (especially if your children are as active as mine!). By adding games and activities into the mix, we can make learning scripture an adventure our kids will enjoy and want to repeat time again.
Interactive learning—like playing memory verse games—creates memories that stick. When our kids play games, their minds form strong connections between scripture and the actions they experience. Think of it as supercharged learning! By engaging their senses—seeing, hearing, and touching—interactive learning helps their brains remember what they’ve learned for longer periods of time.
And, don’t forget the pure, raw joy our kids get out of playing fun games! By infusing a little fun and playfulness into the mix, our kids develop a genuine love for scripture. They actually look forward to learning about God’s Word!
Bonus: when they’re having fun, they’re more motivated, focused, and eager to learn.
So let’s get started—here are our top 3 Bible verse memory games to help your kids (and you!) memorize Scripture and have some fun while you do it!
Top 3 Bible Verse Memory Games
1. Fill-in-the-Blank Bible Memory Verse Game
You can do this first Bible verse game with the materials you have around the house. And, bonus, since some of the versions of this game have your kids sticking things to walls, they’ll have fun helping with the cleanup too!
*Note: This Bible verse game is geared mainly for readers, BUT you can do this with younger kids too by coming up with pictures, symbols, or hand motions for key words. My 3-year-old loves to come up with the motions herself!
In this game, you’ll write out a verse you want to teach your kids, but remove some of the critical words. For example, you can remove, “wait” from Isaiah 40:31–“but those who _________ for the Lord …” Not only will removing words cause your child to search their memory for them, but choosing the right words to remove will start a conversation about some of the more difficult to understand parts of scripture.
How to Play the Fill-In-The-Blank Memory Verse Game
- Find a large enough space where you can write out a memory verse for you kiddos to engage with. You can use some large format butcher paper for this, a dry erase board, or even use dry erase markers on a window or glass shower door (just be sure to erase it when you’re done!).
- Write out the verse, but when you come to a word you want to remove, draw a blank there instead of writing the word.
- Write the words you removed on individual note cards, Post-It Notes, or pieces of paper. If you’re using note cards or paper, have some tape handy for the activity.
- Stick the removable words to the verse where they belong.
- Read the verse with your kids, having them read along with you as you point to the words.
- Take the stackable words down and have your kiddo try to read the verse again, without the words displayed.
- Give the removed words to your kiddo and have them replace them in the written verse from memory.
- Stand in front of the verse or cover it up with a sheet or towel and see if they can recite the entire verse from memory.
KidsBibleteacher.com modifies this a little by erasing more and more words from a verse written on a whiteboard. You can also write each word from the verse on individual note cards and removing words one by one.
Want ready-to-go bible verse memory cards and calendar? We’ve got you covered.
Check out our FREE printable (great for traveling!). This printable pack includes 30 of our favorite bible verses that are easy to memorize and focused on God’s promises – perfect for little ones!
2. Bible Verse Memory Game Puzzle
This Bible verse memory game requires your child to fish through a shuffled pile of words and construct a sentence from them to match a specific Bible verse. It’s kind of like building a puzzle by looking at the picture on the box, but instead of looking at a picture, your kids are using their knowledge of scripture and sentence structure to build up each verse you want them to learn.
Tip: To make this Bible verse game more approachable for little ones, you can even make it like a real puzzle! Write out the verse (including pictures for non-readers) on butcher paper (or several pieces of paper taped together) and cut out your own puzzle piece shapes. Kids will have fun putting the puzzle back together. And, it may help them get started if they don’t yet know the order of the words.
How to play the Bible verse memory game puzzle
- Print or write each word of a verse on a single sheet of paper or notecard.
- Cut out the words and shuffle them together in a random order like you’re shuffling a deck of cards.
- Have your child fish through the words and construct the verse on their own.
It can be helpful to keep words for individual verses in their own sandwich baggies. Things can get a little chaotic for early readers if words from multiple verses get combined into an unwieldy pile.
Again, if the prep work for this activity sounds too intensive, there’s a printable for this game too!
3. Bible Verse and Reference Matching Game
If you’ve ever taught your kids memory Bible verses before, you know how easy it is for them to forget what they just learned the day before (I mean – isn’t this true for us all?). This Bible memory verse game is all about reinforcing scripture memory that your kids have already learned. And, because of that, it’s going to be a little bit harder to master than the other games.
In this bible verse game, your kids will attempt to match a verse with its scripture reference. One trick to really help them memorize Bible verses is to have your kids read the verses out loud as they look for the matching reference.
how to play the Bible memory verse matching game:
- Write a bunch of Bible memory verses on individual notecards.
- Write the matching references (e.g. Romans 8:1) on separate notecards.
- What you do with the two piles of verse and reference cards is entirely up to you. Think about the age of your kids as well. Here are some ideas:
- Separate the piles and shuffle the cards up. Grab a random verse or reference card, then sift through the opposite pile until you’ve found your verse. Do this until you’ve made all the pairs, then check your work.
- Arrange all the cards face down into a grid. Flip two cards over. If the two cards make up a matching verse-reference pair, remove them from the grid. If they don’t, flip them back over. Like the picture memory games your kids play, this tests their memory on another level.
Making Your Bible Verse Memory Games Active
These three Bible memory verse games are tons of fun for kids of every age. But, you can take things up a level by moving the games outside and taking advantage of your kids’ naturally active (or, wild) minds and bodies. Some idea to try:
- Hide any cut out words, verses, or references and transform the memory verse game into a scavenger hunt.
- Pretend the materials are bugs and you kids need to hunt them down and swat them with a flyswatter.
- Get a bunch of kids together and make a Bible memory verse relay race!
On Your Mark, Get Set …
Hopefully these three Bible memory verse games have left you feeling more edified than exhausted! Make sure to grab our easy printable guides to make setting up these games a breeze!
We hope you have fun trying out these fun memory verse games with your family.
