As part of our morning prayers, we always recite a psalm, with the intention of gradually learning it by heart. The psalm is printed in a large font on 11 x 17 paper and placed on the wall so all the children can see it. Those who are not yet reading simply listen and say as much as they remember.

After a few weeks, we let the children come before the other students and recite as much as they know. Often we give them little hints if they get stuck. Whatever they are able to do, we encourage them. When most of the children know all or most of the Psalm, we start learning another one.

This is a list of psalms that seems to be of reasonable length and appropriate content for school age children to memorize. Some of them are taken from a book on Elder Ambrose of Optina and many others are added which seemed to be appropriate. The list is arranged according to the numbering used in the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament, the number of verses being given in parentheses.

1 (6), 3 (8), 4 (10), 8 (8), 14 (5), 15 (11), 18 (14), 22 (7). 31 (11), 33(22), 45 (11), 46 (9), 50 (20), 53 (7), 62 (10), 69 (7), 83 (13), 84 (13), 90 (16), 92 (7), 95 (13), 99 (4), 102 (20), 107(14), 110 (10), 111(9), 112(8), 114(9), 116(2) , 120(8), 124(5), 127(7), 129(6), 130(4), 132(4), 133 (4), 134(20), 135(26) , 137(8), 140(11), 141(11), 142(14), 145(10), 146(12) , 148(14), 149(9), 150(5).