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Monday, October 11, 2010

Let's Memorize!!!!!

When I was reading up on classical education I came across quite a bit about how memorizing comes into the educational day. I already loved the idea of memory work so this was an easy thing to plan into our day.

Our school day starts with our Bible Time. A part of our day I'm loving. There's still some work to do with it but it is great! A whole post or two will be devoted to this a some point, I think.

After Bible Time we have Circle Time. This is the part of the day where I put things I want us all to work on together. Since we have little guys/preschool here too we do a little calendar and talk about the days, weather, and how to write the date. Since we've got a 1st grader we do place value by counting the days in school on a place value chart.

Then we work on our memory work. We started the year with Mr. Wiedz's and my "family verse". 2 Corinthians 4:18 "So we fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary but what is unseen is eternal."

After that we memorized a fall poem by Robert Louis Stevenson.

"Autumn Fires"

Sing a song of seasons
Something bright in all
Flowers in the summer
Fires in the fall

And now we're onto the books of the Bible. A couple of Sundays ago I wrote the list out on our board that we see each day. Daunting. And I just went with the Old Testament first. But I did remember our Wee Sing Bible Songs CD having an Old Testament song and figured we'd use that. I couldn't find it! So I went to YouTube. YouTube is not a source I've ever used but I thought I'd try.

The first day we looked at the list written on the board. I said the list then they tried following along with me. Then I looked up the video I'd found. Each day since we've sang this little song and let me tell you....we're getting it. We're memorizing the books of the Bible!

I thought I'd share the video we're using. The kids are loving it!


The kids also have memory work as part of their grammar lessons through the weeks. I'm finding a lot of benefits of our memory work. #2 had a lot of things to memorize at the beginning of Cub Scouts and I really think the training of his brain helped.