Our Bible quiz game

A couple of years ago I customized a Bible quiz game that has born much fruit in our family. Our four sons love this game.

The beauty of it is that it allows us to test each child’s memory work at their own level in a fun format. I used an old game board which had multi-colored spaces and colored rings to collect (something like Trivial Pursuit or Bible Challenge would work great).

I assigned new categories to each color. Our game has 7 different colors, so our categories are as follows: dark blue is Hymns and Psalms, red is Scripture Memory, orange is Creeds, Prayers and Sacraments, gold is Catechism, green is Church History, light blue is Theology and brown is Family History.

I typed up questions for each category on the computer, choosing some from each area for each child. The children roll the die and move to the appropriate color. If they answer their question correctly, they get a ring. We set a timer, and if the children get a certain number of rings before the timer goes off, their team wins; if they don’t, mom and dad win! We play once or twice a month on Sunday evenings.

For hymns and psalms my husband might ask an older child to recite a psalm they have learned. A middle child might be asked “Who wrote the following hymns?”, and a younger child might get his ring if the whole family can sing the first verse of a chosen hymn. Of course, we choose hymns that we have been singing in family devotions, and this game provides an additional motivation for the children to pay attention to the hymns we are teaching during that time. Each child’s scripture memory is a review of what they have been learning for the past three months.

Creeds, prayers and sacraments might have the oldest child answering questions about the meaning of baptism or communion, while our middle children might be asked to recite The Lord’s Prayer or The Apostle’s Creed. Our youngest might be asked to think of a missionary we are praying for and remind the family of one of their prayer requests. The family will pause for prayer before that child gets his colored ring.

Our church teaches the catechism, so our little ones are asked questions from The Children’s Catechism while our oldest recites passages he is learning from The Shorter Catechism. Church history for the younger ones is usually taken from the Old or New Testament, while our school aged children are asked questions about famous missionaries, reformers or doctrines of the church. Theology questions test our little ones on things like “Who is Jesus?” and “Are there more gods than one?” while our oldest is asked to define terms like sanctification and justification. Family History is just for fun. This is when mom or dad is asked to share a memory about their own childhood, about the child whose turn it is, about a grandparent, or a significant family event. This category gives us a fun reason to pass on some of our heritage to our children.

It took me about two hours total to type out questions for these categories, but there has been a far greater return on my small investment. In addition to hours of enjoyment, this gives us the opportunity to regularly see how our children are doing with their memory work and their understanding of important doctrines and church history. Our non-reading children have been enjoying the Sunday service much more now that they can participate in the creeds, hymns and prayers that they have learned.

I go through the questions about once every three months and take out those that are old or well-learned and replace them with new verses, hymns, catechism questions and the like.