WR: Memory Work

I thought I'd share a really bad picture of our large white-board which hangs in our dining room, which is not only my favorite room in the house (it has 6 walls due to an "eyebrow") but also serves as our main school room.

Our memory work is listed each week- on the left- English grammar. On the right, our Bible verse. We have it down in English but we are still going over it in Latin almost daily. Next is our history sentence, then science, geography, Bible and math. I don't put our weekly poetry on the board. This week we opted for a poem by Wm Bradford and, while only a paragraph long, it has proved tricky due to middle english and unusual punctuation. It is beautiful though! I also don't list VP cards. We add a certain number each week and when we are done with them we'll do the presidents. This is the second year we've done the VP cards and all but Flower can recite them to where we are at without looking. This summer I plan to introduce the Bible TimeLine cards (160 as well). Some of them overlap so I don't want to practice them at the same time.

On Mondays I generally employ a smaller lap size white board to write a subjects memory work on. Then I erase a portion at a time as we say it over and over and over...

Frankly, memory work is hard work. But is so enriching to hear the kids recite poems that we worked on in July, or to hear them talk about Old Testament people in the context of Persia and what was going on when because they have memorized a history timeline as well as Biblical characters and maps. Another bonus is that they are memorizing info more and more quickly. It is hard work, yes, but time well invested.