Memory Work Monday
A fellow homeschool mom suggested blogging on Mondays about what we’ll be doing for memory work each week. I’ve been wanting to get back on the ball with that, so I made it a goal to sort out our memory work during spring break.
I have binders (rather than a card file) set up for each of the boys based on the Simply Charlotte Mason scripture memory system. It is a fabulous system for learning, and especially reviewing, memory work…when I remember to utilize it…
There are tabs for daily work, odd/even days, weekdays, and ones for each day of the month. So if today is Monday, the 28th, we review whatever is behind the daily tab, the even day tab, the Monday tab, and the 28 tab. As we learn new pieces, we file the old ones away for review. One day we might actually have something behind the 28th day tab!
We were very diligent about memorizing new pieces and reviewing all of our old work last year. Then I had a baby and…things began to slide (which was kind of the story of 2010.) But this is one aspect of our homeschooling that I don’t want to let slide indefinitely. So fifteen months later, I’m recommitting to memory work!
We have memorized a very few things this school year, but have not been faithful at all as far as reviewing goes. But if we don’t review, we don’t retain (even old favorites), as I found out this morning, although they did quite well with our last three scripture verses (much better than I did.)
So here’s what we’re working on this week. We added one new poem, everything else is a review.
Scriptures: We’re working on the Doctrine and Covenants scripture mastery verses this year. This week’s verse is D & C 64:23.
Poetry:
- “The Voice of Spring” by Mary Howitt (new)
- “In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae
- “Jabberwocky”
- “Eletelephony” (it’s D’s favorite)
- Now that I think about it, we’ve been learning about meter and should probably just add the different poetic feet (iamb, trochee, anapest, and dactyl) to our memory work time.
American History: (all review because I don’t want us to forget)
- Preamble to the U.S. Constitution
- Intro to the Declaration of Independence
- The Gettysburg Address–this was our major piece of memory work last fall when we studied the Civil War, but we never finished it and I would like to.
Latin: Chants, vocabulary, and songs–A and I have memorized all the chants in Latina Christiana I and we do review those weekly during Latin. Vocabulary is another matter entirely. We have not been diligent at all since before Christmas, so flashcards are back on our plate. C also has flashcards for Prima Latina that we’re reviewing.
I still need to update the binders with our current work, but we’re back at it! Maybe doing a memory work recital for Daddy on the weekends will be good motivation to keep at it. We’ll see…
La Scuola d'Argento 
this looks great. Are you reviewing all these poems, or are you learning all the different ones at the same time?
The spring poem is new, all the others we’ve learned before.
We use the scripture memory system, and love it. How did you adapt it to make it work on only one day of the week? I should set up something like this. We’ll be starting to memorize some poems, and he’s starting to learn the parts of speech and I’m sure that other things will come up. I need to get something off the ground and going for us!
Oh, I had to go back and edit that sentence! We’ll blog about it on Monday, but it’s memory work for the whole week.
…although sometimes we only get to it once a week!
We’ve got to get back into this habit.
Oh, and this would be great in the Classical Homeschool Carnival. Would you think about submitting it please?
We use the CM Scripture Memory System, and I like what you are doing with memorizing poetry, etc… I learned a lot from reading your post! We are in our second year of homeschooling and I’m getting a strong sense of our philosophy and what works best for my children. Our CM scripture box is one of the things that WORKS – so I know adding other things for memory would work well. Perhaps I’ll join you in blogging about memorization on Mondays!
Thanks for a great post