MEMORY WORK
The Classical Approach takes advantage of children's ability to quickly memorize material while they are young. While memory work is important, we all know that it isn't always fun for children. As a general rule, when a child is memorizing new material the memory work sessions should be kept short (under 5 minutes) and would involve some kind of drill. To make memory review more interesting consider some of the suggestions made by the members of the Catholic Classical Listserve.
On the subject of puzzles and making them, it **is** fun for the
children to prepare their own! Every Friday, as a kind of closure for the week, each of the older children makes 4-5 "Quiz Cards". We use index cards, white or colors, writing a fact that should be remembered from what we have worked on during the week. We have history dates, latin words or phrases (Our 3yo sings "Twinkle Twinkle" in Latin thanks to Our Roman Roots--but he doesn't know it in English), religion Who's Who, catechism questions, math vocabulary, science facts, and so on.
It was an act of restraint in the beginning for me to avoid choosing the questions for them! They would spend ages and ages looking for something to trip up their siblings while reviewing everything from the week. Finally, it began to dawn on them that the more obscure quotes and facts were getting difficult to remember even for the author. Over time (we have 2 years' worth of cards now, so I pick and choose from week to week), they have come to choose the most important, and thus, most easily remembered, facts by themselves. If I were to start over, I would probably use a different color card for each different subject to simplify the searching on my part. If it seems that no one can remember anything from science, for example, we will play games based just on science. Also, in setting up "Jeopardy" games, it could simplify the selection of categories.
After a few weeks, we had enough to play games with. We have played a Trivial Pursuit-type of game with a poster-paper board, pairing up an older child with a younger child in an attempt to level the playing field. We have played "Hopscotch" whereby the child must answer the question to stay on the spot. We have also played a semblance of "Chutes and Ladders" and so on---the idea being that you can adapt almost any familiar game to include answering review questions.
Another "puzzling" resource for those of you with Internet access: there is an educational website that allows you to make puzzles of your own in the familiar formats: crosswords, word searches, math squares, cryptograms, mazes and so on. The address is: www.puzzlemaker.com
The Singing Smart tapes which have science and history facts to very catchy tunes are excellent. They are sold by the Catholic owned Learning Home.
Tapes from Audio Memory to make memorizing a bit easier. They have Grammar Songs, Geography Songs, States & Capitals Songs, Multiplication, Addition and Subtraction Songs, and History Songs (although I'd stay away from the History
Songs tape because I'm pretty sure the company is protestant). You get a book with all the lyrics, along with the cassettes. Haven't received them yet, but I'll let you know if they help! You can hear song samples at their website: www.audiomemory.com (800)365-SING Audio Memory 501 Cliff Drive Newport Beach CA 92663
This is the first year I have been requiring much memory work, and the thing I have had the most success with (so far) is making matching games. I use those 5x3 index cards. For history dates, we are doing explorers and early American history; I copy pictures from Encarta 96, tape them onto one index card, then put dates on another index card, and have the kids match them up. I also want them to be able to tell one major fact about the person (Magellan circumnavigated the
globe) but we are not there yet. It took some time to make the cards, but I figured I would have them for subsequent children. Besides, all that cutting and taping was kind of relaxing :> --made me feel like a real teacher. I also am having them copy out things I want them to know, like Characteristics of Living Things.
I took a bunch of index cards, wrote math puzzles on them, then wrote directions like: If the answer is 5, go to the fireplace
If the answer is 6, go to your bed In other words it was a kind of scavenger hunt. It took a long time to prepare and I don't know if it was that helpful as review, but he sure did have fun! He was even inspired to make a scavenger hunt for *me* to solve (double review, plus thinking skills in setting up the game-- believe me, there are thinking skills involved!)
This idea could be simplified in preparation time by using the puzzle idea, with the message being something like "Look in your top drawer" --then you could leave a note, stickers, little treat, whatever in the right place for them to "discover".
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