Memory Work

Anyone who knows me and my homeschool philosophy much at all knows how enthusiastic I am about memory work. I had a wonderful 4th grade teacher in Okinawa who I know I have mentioned here before, Mrs. Freeman, who had us learn a lot of memory work. I still can recall those things. I am a firm believer that things you memorize well as a child will be recalled much easier as an adult! Of course, I have also had a lot of experience putting things in short-term memory, even as a child, and I don't remember those things well at all. Unfortunately a lot of Bible verses are that way for me. I have memorized TONS of Bible verses over the course of my lifetime, since I always attended Christian schools, but I just memorized what was needed when it was needed, and promptly forgot it. (Well, not totally forgotten--I recognize verses of course, but I can't just immediately recall them and recite them, only give the general gist.)

Okay, that was actually a bit of a digression . . . I was going somehere else with that memory work lead-in. . . Ah yes. The new co-op next year (which we are calling Rivendell). I'm teaching life science to the jr. high boys during the morning, which is when our younger kids will be over at the other co-op, the one we've done since we came here, with all the big 5th week activities and all. In the afternoon while the older boys are doing history, I'll be in charge of the younger guys. One of the things I'll be focusing on with them is memory work.

Since the older boys are using Tapestry of Grace for history, I am trying to coordinate stuff with that. We'll do mapwork every week, and that will be related to wherever we are focusing on in history. We're doing Year 1 (the ancients), so I was trying to figure out what Scripture passage we would work on. Learning passages, as opposed to just individual verses, is one thing that I think helps with long-term retention. I had tossed around several ideas (and really, ALL passages are worthy of memorization, LOL), but nothing had just seemed like it was exactly the right one. Our paster was preaching Sunday on the end of Acts 5, where the apostles are being persecuted for preaching Jesus. He referenced Heb. 11 several times, and it was like "That's it!" Heb. 11 goes perfectly with our study of the ancients, and it is such an encouragement for living today! We're going to memorize all of Heb. 11 plus the first 2 verses of Heb. 12, which I think really tie it all up for us now. I'm so excited!

Another thing we will be working on is a 32 point timeline with dates. We memorized the Classical Conversations timeline last year, which has 160 points (it uses the history cards from Veritas Press), and while I think it is very worthwhile (and we still work on it), I did have a few beefs with it. One is that you don't memorize dates with it--and how could you, really?! It would take FOREVER to say!--and another is that once Jamestown is founded, there are no events from anywhere else in the world. So I made my own timeline with dates using what I consider really pivotal points from history. Since we'll memorize the dates along with them, then in the future when the kids hear about some other event, they can put it in the right general stage of history. And I included things like Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, and the Bolshevik Revolution. It's still very western-centric, but that's what we're familiar with. As we learn other events from other parts of the world, hopefully we'll be able to relate to them better. We'll cover one event per week, and unlike CC, I'll talk a little bit about the event and why it is important!

We will also have one science fact a week, and I'm taking these from the BJU Life Science book that I will be using with the older boys. I figure tying things into what the older boys are studying will make it easier for all the kids to participate in discussions around the dinner table about what they're learning! We should also have time to do a little with whatever fact it is for the week--look at slides under the microscope, observe the older kids' dissections, etc. Hopefully they will be really excited about when it will be their turn to do life science labs!

The last thing we'll be doing is part of a poem each week. The ones I have picked out so far really don't have anything to do with anything else. They were just fun ones or ones that I thought worthwhile for some other character quality reason. I'm not totally set on them, though. We're going to have a mom's meeting on Aug. 10, and I'll see if the other moms have any other suggestions they would rather do. First we're doing a very easy, familiar one--The Owl and the Pussycat by Edmund Lear. I thought that it would be good, especially for the little ones, to get something easy under their belt, along with all this other harder memory work. We'll just take a few weeks on this one. The second one is True Nobility by Edgar Guest. This is one of those worthy character ones, LOL. Then we are going to do I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. Although Longfellow originally wrote this poem, we are going to memorize the stanzas in the order of the traditional carol. I like it better, LOL, plus they'll probably actually have occasion to use their knowledge at some point! After Christmas Break, we'll start The Destruction of Sennacherib by George Byron. That poem at least ties in with our "Ancients" theme, and the boys should enjoy it! And then I think we will do a lovely little poem about humility called The Violet by Jane Taylor. More of a girly poem to balance out the war of the previous one, LOL. We will still have a few weeks left--maybe 3--so we might do a short Robert Louis Stevenson one or something easy to finish off the year. Or maybe we'll need an extra week or 2 on one of the other poems. We'll have to be flexible and play it by ear.

So that's the plan for memory work for next year! I'm excited about it! I think the kids will enjoy it and really learn a lot! And hopefully, in about 30 years, they will still be able to recall what we worked so hard on!