This is another post that is mostly for me, but like usual, if you are interested, go ahead and read it. As Monday will be the first day of our new school year, I thought it would be helpful for me to write down some goals that I have for the year. Lydia will be starting Kindergarten and Eleanor will be doing K3. This year, I will consider the year complete when Lydia completes 170 "days" of school. I don't have any particular number of days that I want Ellie to finish; school will be completely optional and mostly-child led for her this year.
Math:
Lydia- At a minimum, I'd like to get through Math Mammoth 1A and Miquon Orange, although if we can get through Math Mammoth 1B and Miquon Red, that would be ideal. Like last year, it will be difficult to predict where she might hit walls with concepts, so it is hard what sort of pace she will be able to set, and completing both of those programs is a lot of work. I'd also like to have her skip counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s.
Eleanor- If I can have her accurately counting to 20, or 50 as a higher goal, that would be great. I'd also like to get through MEP Reception which is only 60 lessons, so we'll see how that goes.
Reading:
Lydia- I'm not really sure how far she will get, but my biggest goal for this year is fluency. I want her to be able to read the words she knows quicker than right now. A lot of that will be training. Currently she reads a word and then looks around and I have to get her attention all over again for another word. I guess as a big goal, I'd like for her to be able to mostly read books like Little Bear or other beginner readers books on her own. I also really want to be better about doing read alouds with her, so I'm going to try to read her seven books this year.
Eleanor- I'd like her to know all the sounds of the letters and possibly begin some pre-reading towards the end of the year (e.g. "what letter starts the word, bat?"). Depending on how she does, I might start cvc words later, but that's a ways off right now.
Spelling:
Lydia- I'd like her to finish All About Spelling 1, which means she could confidently spell all cvc words and some others.
Eleanor- I have no aspirations for spelling this year. Except I might teach her how to spell her name?
Handwriting:
Lydia- I want her to finish HWT Kindergarten and hopefully start doing copywork. With that, she'll learn lowercase letters, which she still needs to work on.
Eleanor- I want her to work on pre-writing activities and focus on control and correct pencil grip.
Friday, August 2, 2013
End of Lydia's PreK Year Review
We start a new school year on Monday, so I thought that I would review how far Lydia has come this year. This is mostly for myself, so I don't intend for many other people to all be interested in this information. However, if you are or if you think it would help you, read on!
Lydia completed 40 weeks of school, counting 3 days of work as a week, so approximately 120 days of school. In that time, I really saw her progress a lot. For example, she went from not grasping the concept of bigger/smaller to using it to describe things to me.
Reading/Spelling
July: "Right now she knows and recognizes all the letters and their sounds. She can occasionally tell me the first letter of a word when she hears it. She can also spell her name using magnet letters without any help."
October: "She can read all cvc words. She can also read several short vowel 4-letter words. Mostly these are ones that end with double letters, like "mall," but also words that end in -ck. She's still fairly slow at reading, but she is definitely improving and progressing. We haven't worked at spelling at all."
January: "She can read most short vowel 5 letter words as well as most two-letter blends, like "bl" or "st". She still needs some practice with these to solidify them, though."
July: She can read all the blends and digraphs that have been brought up in OPGTR so far, including "th," "sh," among others and she can blend very confidently. She can also read simple silent "e" words and words that only have e at the end (like he and she). She has completed through Lesson 73 of OPGTR. For Spelling, she has started All About Spelling Level 1 and has completed the first 6 steps, which means that she can spell most cvc words, although she is still practicing with them.
Math
July: " She can currently count to 20 without help and recognize numbers 1-12 when written. She can mostly count small numbers of objects (10 or less) and tell me how many of something there is, but sometimes double counts things or guesses."
October: "She can count to 30 without help and recognize numbers 1-30 when written. She can count objects with accuracy if she takes the time. She understands the concepts of smaller/larger, same/different. She is struggling with the concept of more/less."
January: She can count to 100 with help. She has a basic grasp on more/less and can do some simple addition with help or c-rods.
July: She can do all addition/subtraction within 10 with manipulatives and can usually do it within 20 with manipulatives. She understands the concept of "0". She knows all the important shapes, colors, etc. She understands place value through 10s and can tell you that 15 is made up of 10 and 5. She finished all of Essential Math A, 2/3 of Essential Math B, about 40 pages of Miquon Orange/Red, and is on Lesson 2 of Math Mammoth 1A.
Handwriting:
She finished Handwriting Without Tears PreK and is halfway through HWT Kindergarten. She can form all of her uppercase letters with ease and legibility, although writing on a line is still difficult and she often writes the letters with incorrect strokes.
Memorization:
Lydia blew me away with her memorization abilities this year. She memorized 10 religious selections, 7 poems, and 7 facts and lists. She also started memorizing her timeline of the world.
All told, it was a very successful year!
Lydia completed 40 weeks of school, counting 3 days of work as a week, so approximately 120 days of school. In that time, I really saw her progress a lot. For example, she went from not grasping the concept of bigger/smaller to using it to describe things to me.
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| All the books she finished completely this year |
Reading/Spelling
July: "Right now she knows and recognizes all the letters and their sounds. She can occasionally tell me the first letter of a word when she hears it. She can also spell her name using magnet letters without any help."
October: "She can read all cvc words. She can also read several short vowel 4-letter words. Mostly these are ones that end with double letters, like "mall," but also words that end in -ck. She's still fairly slow at reading, but she is definitely improving and progressing. We haven't worked at spelling at all."
January: "She can read most short vowel 5 letter words as well as most two-letter blends, like "bl" or "st". She still needs some practice with these to solidify them, though."
July: She can read all the blends and digraphs that have been brought up in OPGTR so far, including "th," "sh," among others and she can blend very confidently. She can also read simple silent "e" words and words that only have e at the end (like he and she). She has completed through Lesson 73 of OPGTR. For Spelling, she has started All About Spelling Level 1 and has completed the first 6 steps, which means that she can spell most cvc words, although she is still practicing with them.
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| Pages she completed in Miquon |
July: " She can currently count to 20 without help and recognize numbers 1-12 when written. She can mostly count small numbers of objects (10 or less) and tell me how many of something there is, but sometimes double counts things or guesses."
October: "She can count to 30 without help and recognize numbers 1-30 when written. She can count objects with accuracy if she takes the time. She understands the concepts of smaller/larger, same/different. She is struggling with the concept of more/less."
January: She can count to 100 with help. She has a basic grasp on more/less and can do some simple addition with help or c-rods.
July: She can do all addition/subtraction within 10 with manipulatives and can usually do it within 20 with manipulatives. She understands the concept of "0". She knows all the important shapes, colors, etc. She understands place value through 10s and can tell you that 15 is made up of 10 and 5. She finished all of Essential Math A, 2/3 of Essential Math B, about 40 pages of Miquon Orange/Red, and is on Lesson 2 of Math Mammoth 1A.
Handwriting:
She finished Handwriting Without Tears PreK and is halfway through HWT Kindergarten. She can form all of her uppercase letters with ease and legibility, although writing on a line is still difficult and she often writes the letters with incorrect strokes.
Memorization:
Lydia blew me away with her memorization abilities this year. She memorized 10 religious selections, 7 poems, and 7 facts and lists. She also started memorizing her timeline of the world.
All told, it was a very successful year!
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Weekly Report: Weeks 35-36
This is going to be a long post mostly for myself, so please bear with me. It is going to have a ton of pictures because we've had a very busy and memorable few weeks. Somehow I managed to squeeze in two weeks of school into that time, but that was definitely not the focus of our month.
The biggest highlight was definitely our trip to Lake Powell and then northern Utah to a family reunion at our old family farm. I took the three girls by myself and drove the entire trip (over 3000 miles!) without Tyler because he was busy taking finals. It was daunting and exhausting, but well worth the effort.
Then when we got back home, we went to the splash park and a few days later enjoyed a lot of Independence Day festivities.
Now, for actual school-related stuff, we officially reached my goal for Pre-K! 36 weeks of at least 3 days per week was my initial goal. I've done it! Going into homeschooling, I was most afraid that I wouldn't have the discipline to do all the work and that I liked it more in theory than in practice. I've proven to myself this year that I do have the discipline to do what is needed. We're not starting Kindergarten officially until August 6th, so we'll actually get a few more weeks of school in for PreK. Right now I'm focusing on revving us up and getting more into the habit of doing school every day. In Kindergarten, my goal is 170 days of school minimum (this year we did approximately 115 days).
Math:
We've started back into our curricula rather than just mommy-inspired lessons. Lydia is definitely understanding 10s place value much better now, which is a big deal for her. C-rods are so brilliant for this and really helped. I've also learned the value of promising M&Ms for every 2 problems she completes. Her productivity has gone up exponentially.
Reading:
We continue to slowly go through OPGTR. Lydia is still working on silent-e words. Right now our speed is mostly determined by her lack of focus during practice than by her decoding ability. She just needs to work on fluency, but we'll keep on trucking. I've also started requiring that we read at least a page out of Little Bear every day too. Right now she can read about 60% of the words (I help with the rest), and the fact that she has almost all of the episodes of the Little Bear tv show memorized is helping with some familiarity too.
Memorization:
Lydia officially recited "Sweet and Low" today without help or reminders. It is the longest poem she's memorized yet (16 lines). I think I will just let her review it for a few more days before she starts something else. I'm not sure what we'll start next because I sort of want to wait until she officially starts Kindergarten before I take anything new off her list, but we'll see.
Handwriting:
Lydia's still doing well with this. She's doing about 2-3 pages in her HWT Kindergarten workbook. I really don't expect it to last us for too long into Kindergarten, but it is still good for her.
Spelling:
We're still doing AAS. Lydia just finished Step 5 and started Step 6 today. We're still loving it.
And that's our last few weeks. Before we start Kindergarten, I'll write up my end of year review, but as a spoiler, I'll just say that I am so proud of Lydia and how well she's doing!
The biggest highlight was definitely our trip to Lake Powell and then northern Utah to a family reunion at our old family farm. I took the three girls by myself and drove the entire trip (over 3000 miles!) without Tyler because he was busy taking finals. It was daunting and exhausting, but well worth the effort.
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| On the houseboat at Lake Powell |
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| In our private cove at Lake Powell |
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| Lydia helping Uncle Ken drive the boat |
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| Adelaide sitting in her own camp chair, very pleased with herself. |
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| Lydia in her element on an old fashioned train |
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| Lydia and Ellie on the train |
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| Eleanor helping Grandpa pick peas at the family farm |
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| Lydia and Eleanor enjoying the hammock at the family farm |
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| Ellie at the splash park |
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| Lydia and Adelaide at the splash park |
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| Swimming at Grandma's house on the 4th of July |
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| Elenaor helping Grandpa blow up fireworks |
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| Lydia and Ellie swinging on a tire swing at the house Daddy grew up in on the 4th of July |
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| Swimming at Daddy's old house on the 4th of July. They wouldn't leave the stairs, but still had lots of fun! |
Math:
We've started back into our curricula rather than just mommy-inspired lessons. Lydia is definitely understanding 10s place value much better now, which is a big deal for her. C-rods are so brilliant for this and really helped. I've also learned the value of promising M&Ms for every 2 problems she completes. Her productivity has gone up exponentially.
Reading:
We continue to slowly go through OPGTR. Lydia is still working on silent-e words. Right now our speed is mostly determined by her lack of focus during practice than by her decoding ability. She just needs to work on fluency, but we'll keep on trucking. I've also started requiring that we read at least a page out of Little Bear every day too. Right now she can read about 60% of the words (I help with the rest), and the fact that she has almost all of the episodes of the Little Bear tv show memorized is helping with some familiarity too.
Memorization:
Lydia officially recited "Sweet and Low" today without help or reminders. It is the longest poem she's memorized yet (16 lines). I think I will just let her review it for a few more days before she starts something else. I'm not sure what we'll start next because I sort of want to wait until she officially starts Kindergarten before I take anything new off her list, but we'll see.
Handwriting:
Lydia's still doing well with this. She's doing about 2-3 pages in her HWT Kindergarten workbook. I really don't expect it to last us for too long into Kindergarten, but it is still good for her.
Spelling:
We're still doing AAS. Lydia just finished Step 5 and started Step 6 today. We're still loving it.
And that's our last few weeks. Before we start Kindergarten, I'll write up my end of year review, but as a spoiler, I'll just say that I am so proud of Lydia and how well she's doing!
Friday, July 5, 2013
Memorization Plan for Kindergarten 2013/14
For PreK, I created what I thought was an ambitious memorization plan for Lydia. She blew me away with her ability to memorize and I ended up needing to add a lot of content. This year I have created another ambitious plan for Kindergarten. I have about the same amount of religious content on this list. Inspiration for them comes mostly from the Articles of Faith (of which there are 13) and the LDS Scripture Mastery list. The poems I found are longer and more challenging than last year, but they are fun and appeal to her interests. Last year, poems seemed to be her favorite thing to memorize, so I may even be adding more to that list as the year goes on.
For facts this year, Lydia will be attempting to memorize a 161 point timeline of the world using the Classical Conversations Classical Acts & Facts cards as our list. I feel like this is especially ambitious, but I am also OK if it takes us more than one year to complete as I feel like having a timeline memorized will prove incredibly valuable for her. The CC cards are broken into 4 sets by time period, and we'll be working on one set at a time. For reference, here is a link to our list for last year, here is a link to how and why we do memorization, and here is a link to the CC Cards we'll be using.
We've completed the ones that are crossed out. The ones that are italicized are being worked on currently.
Religion:
"Autumn" by Emily Dickinson
The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry's cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.
The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I'll put a trinket on.
“Dora Diller” by Jack Prelutsky
My stomach's full of butterflies!
lamented Dora Diller.
Her mother sighed. "That's no surprise,
you ate a caterpillar!"
“Knight-in-Armour“ by A. A. Milne
Whenever I’m a shining Knight,
I buckle on my armour tight;
And then I look about for things,
Like Rushings-Out, and Rescuings,
And Savings from the Dragon’s Lair,
And fighting all the Dragons there.
And sometimes when our fights begin,
I think I’ll let the Dragons win...
And then I think perhaps I won’t,
Because they’re Dragons, and I don’t.
“The Swing” by Robert Louis Stevenson
How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!
Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
River and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside--
Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown--
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down!
For facts this year, Lydia will be attempting to memorize a 161 point timeline of the world using the Classical Conversations Classical Acts & Facts cards as our list. I feel like this is especially ambitious, but I am also OK if it takes us more than one year to complete as I feel like having a timeline memorized will prove incredibly valuable for her. The CC cards are broken into 4 sets by time period, and we'll be working on one set at a time. For reference, here is a link to our list for last year, here is a link to how and why we do memorization, and here is a link to the CC Cards we'll be using.
We've completed the ones that are crossed out. The ones that are italicized are being worked on currently.
Religion:
Article of Faith 4: We believe that the first principles and ordinances of the Gospel are: first, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; second, Repentance; third, Baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; fourth, Laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.Article of Faith 5: We believe that a man must be called of God, by prophecy, and by the laying on of hands by those who are in authority, to preach the Gospel and administer in the ordinances thereof.Article of Faith 6: We believe in the same organization that existed in the Primitive Church, namely, apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists, and so forth.- Job 19:25–26: For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.
- Isaiah 55:8–9: For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
John 7:17: If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.- Alma 32:21: And now as I said concerning faith — faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.
- D&C 25:12: For my soul delighteth in the song of the heart; yea, the song of the righteous is a prayer unto me, and it shall be answered with a blessing upon their heads.
"Hope is the thing with feathers" by Emily
Dickinson
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by
Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
“The arrow and the song” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?
Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.
“The Fisherman” by Abbie Farwell Brown (started 1-16-14)f
The fisherman goes out at dawn
When every one's abed,
And from the bottom of the sea
Draws up his daily bread.
His life is strange; half on the shore
And half upon the sea —
Not quite a fish, and yet not quite
The same as you and me.
The fisherman has curious eyes;
They make you feel so queer,
As if they had seen many things
Of wonder and of fear.
They're like the sea on foggy days, —
Not gray, nor yet quite blue;
They 're like the wondrous tales he tells
Not quite — yet maybe — true.
He knows so much of boats and tides,
Of winds and clouds and sky!
But when I tell of city things,
He sniffs and shuts one eye!
Facts and Lists:
Classical Conversations Timeline: Ancient World- Classical Conversations Timeline: Medieval World (started 10-31-13)
- Classical Conversations Timeline: New World
- Classical Conversations Timeline: Modern World
Monday, July 1, 2013
How We Do Memorization
As I've mentioned before, memorization is a very important subject in our home. I grew up doing very little memorization and I still have a lot of difficulty memorizing anything. I always regretted this and memorization was one of the first subjects I knew I wanted to do when I decided to homeschool.
In most classical education scopes and sequences, memorization is a very important subject, especially in the younger years. Some authors/speakers suggest that poetry is the most important source for memorization material. Others say scripture. And still others say facts and lists are important, although even these people disagree as to whether the facts and lists should be taught in context with the subject or whether it is good just to memorize them as stand-alones. I agree with all of these groups! I think poetry is great because it helps our minds get filled with good language and sentence structure. Scriptures are important because of the content that is in them, and I honestly believe that one of the ways the Spirit can speak to us is through those words we have memorized. Facts and lists are important because they create a peg effect: the more familiar you are with a word or topic, the more you pay attention when it is brought up and therefore the more you learn about it. Thus while memorizing you are creating a "peg" on which to hang information. I also believe that while teaching memorized pieces in context is ideal, there is still much to be gained from memorizing for memorization's sake.
Children get confidence and self-esteem when they have memorized something that they saw as challenging. It feels good and is a great accomplishment to memorize something challenging and know that it will never be apart from them again, that it is in their heads forever. When I was in eighth grade, I decided on my own that I wanted to memorize the Gettysburg Address. When I had learned it all, I was very proud of myself, and to this day I still remember the Gettysburg Address and perk up when I hear it mentioned. I want my children to have this experience as much as possible.
That's the "why" of our memorization. Our "how" is actually pretty simple and doesn't take too long every day. The key is that we do it every day that we do school, and we constantly review in order to not forget anything.
As I've mentioned in previous posts, I mentally divide our memorization focus into three categories: Language, Religion, and Facts & Lists. Language includes things like poetry, great speeches, Shakespeare, etc. Religion is mostly scripture, but can include hymns or quotes. Facts & Lists is the miscellaneous group. So far this section has included things like the 8 planets, my phone number, the colors in a rainbow, etc. I try to keep our memorization workload pretty evenly divided between these three categories, although language and scripture tend to dominate in this season of our lives. I imagine and we do more science and history, though, facts and lists will catch up. At some point we might include foreign language as a fourth category, but not yet.
What I do is take the three categories I listed and make up a list of things to memorize. This is the fun part for me. I use Google searches, Living Memory by Andrew Campbell, various church resources like the Seminary Mastery list, and just ideas that I have to compile what we want to do. Here is the list I did for the 2012/13 school year (Lydia's PreK).
After I have the list compiled, I write each item on its own index card.
As poems get longer I might have to rethink this, but for now, this has worked. I keep all of our future memorization work handy for use as soon as Lydia has mastered old ones. I also keep a memorization book. It is actually just a small scrap book that someone gave to us and that I organized according to the Simply Charlotte Mason method.
At first, every day we reviewed our new memorization piece and all the previously memorized pieces. Once that became too cumbersome, I divided all of Lydia's previously memorized work into equal parts and she reviewed each one every other day, and the new piece daily. That's where we are right now.
Pretty soon, though, even that will become too cumbersome so we'll put some of the more recent work into the even/odd group, current work is always daily, and older work will be reviewed one day a week. We'll keep going like this until we have material that we review daily, every other day, weekly, and monthly. It sounds complicated, but once you get it set up, it is very simple.
Every day while I make lunch for Lydia, we do memorization. While I make her sandwiches, she goes through her older memorization and then we work on her current piece. It takes us about 10 minutes, max. When we review the older pieces, I say the title or scripture reference. From that, she repeats the title, says the name of the author, if relavent, and then says the selection. So for "Who Has Seen the Wind," I say the title of the poem and then she says "Who Has Seen the Wind, by Christina Rosetti. Who has seen the wind, neither I nor you..." Sometimes she might need the first word to jog her memory, so I help her.
For new pieces, I always read the entire piece to her completely a few times before having her say it back to me. Then we start with the title and the author. Here's an example of our dialogue:
Me (after having read through the whole poem a few times): "Sweet and Low," by Alfred Lord Tennyson. Say that please."
Lydia: "Sweet and Low, by..."
Me: "Alfred Lord Tennyson"
Lydia: "by Alfred Lord Tennyson"
Me: "Now say the whole thing, Sweet and Low, by Alfred Lord Tennyson"
Lydia: "Sweet and Low by Alfred Lord Tennyson"
Me: "Great. Sweet and low, sweet and low, wind of the western sea."
Lydia: "Sweet and low, wind of the sea."
Me: "Close, but you say Sweet and Low twice and wind of the western sea. So you say, Sweet and low, sweet and low, wind of the western sea."
Lydia: "Sweet and low, sweet and low, wind of the western sea."
Me: "Good, now let's say the whole thing. Sweet and Low, by Alfred Lord Tennyson. Sweet and low, sweet and low, wind of the western sea."
Me: Great! Go ahead and eat your lunch, you did a good job today."
The following day I might read the poem all the way through one and then see if she remembers what we did. I help her along if she gets stuck. Usually we try to do about two lines a day, but sometimes it just takes longer. Often she'll ask or I'll volunteer definitions of words or the meaning of a line. After we did "At the Seaside," she started calling her little plastic shovel a "wooden spade," after I explained that a spade is just like a shovel. Sometimes I'll make a motion or say a line in an over exaggerated way to help her remember. So in "Sweet and Low," it says, "Low, low, breathe and blow." For "breathe" we take a big breathe and lean way back and for "blow" we lean way forward and breathe out as we say the word. Or for D&C 82:10, part of it says, "when you do not what I say, ye have no promise." We always put a big emphasis on the word "not." There's no trick to it, I just always try to make it easier to remember if possible. I also always try to stay in tune with what she seems like she wants to do and don't push it too much on any one day. I want memorization to be enjoyable.
Doing it this way has made it quite painless, and since we always do Lydia's schoolwork immediately after lunch, it is the first subject of the day and never gets forgotten.
We love memorization and I don't see it going to the back burner any time soon!
In most classical education scopes and sequences, memorization is a very important subject, especially in the younger years. Some authors/speakers suggest that poetry is the most important source for memorization material. Others say scripture. And still others say facts and lists are important, although even these people disagree as to whether the facts and lists should be taught in context with the subject or whether it is good just to memorize them as stand-alones. I agree with all of these groups! I think poetry is great because it helps our minds get filled with good language and sentence structure. Scriptures are important because of the content that is in them, and I honestly believe that one of the ways the Spirit can speak to us is through those words we have memorized. Facts and lists are important because they create a peg effect: the more familiar you are with a word or topic, the more you pay attention when it is brought up and therefore the more you learn about it. Thus while memorizing you are creating a "peg" on which to hang information. I also believe that while teaching memorized pieces in context is ideal, there is still much to be gained from memorizing for memorization's sake.
Children get confidence and self-esteem when they have memorized something that they saw as challenging. It feels good and is a great accomplishment to memorize something challenging and know that it will never be apart from them again, that it is in their heads forever. When I was in eighth grade, I decided on my own that I wanted to memorize the Gettysburg Address. When I had learned it all, I was very proud of myself, and to this day I still remember the Gettysburg Address and perk up when I hear it mentioned. I want my children to have this experience as much as possible.
That's the "why" of our memorization. Our "how" is actually pretty simple and doesn't take too long every day. The key is that we do it every day that we do school, and we constantly review in order to not forget anything.
As I've mentioned in previous posts, I mentally divide our memorization focus into three categories: Language, Religion, and Facts & Lists. Language includes things like poetry, great speeches, Shakespeare, etc. Religion is mostly scripture, but can include hymns or quotes. Facts & Lists is the miscellaneous group. So far this section has included things like the 8 planets, my phone number, the colors in a rainbow, etc. I try to keep our memorization workload pretty evenly divided between these three categories, although language and scripture tend to dominate in this season of our lives. I imagine and we do more science and history, though, facts and lists will catch up. At some point we might include foreign language as a fourth category, but not yet.
What I do is take the three categories I listed and make up a list of things to memorize. This is the fun part for me. I use Google searches, Living Memory by Andrew Campbell, various church resources like the Seminary Mastery list, and just ideas that I have to compile what we want to do. Here is the list I did for the 2012/13 school year (Lydia's PreK).
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| Lydia's memorization book |
After I have the list compiled, I write each item on its own index card.
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| Cards that she reviews on even days. On one side is the prompt and on the other is the actual material. |
At first, every day we reviewed our new memorization piece and all the previously memorized pieces. Once that became too cumbersome, I divided all of Lydia's previously memorized work into equal parts and she reviewed each one every other day, and the new piece daily. That's where we are right now.
Pretty soon, though, even that will become too cumbersome so we'll put some of the more recent work into the even/odd group, current work is always daily, and older work will be reviewed one day a week. We'll keep going like this until we have material that we review daily, every other day, weekly, and monthly. It sounds complicated, but once you get it set up, it is very simple.
Every day while I make lunch for Lydia, we do memorization. While I make her sandwiches, she goes through her older memorization and then we work on her current piece. It takes us about 10 minutes, max. When we review the older pieces, I say the title or scripture reference. From that, she repeats the title, says the name of the author, if relavent, and then says the selection. So for "Who Has Seen the Wind," I say the title of the poem and then she says "Who Has Seen the Wind, by Christina Rosetti. Who has seen the wind, neither I nor you..." Sometimes she might need the first word to jog her memory, so I help her.
For new pieces, I always read the entire piece to her completely a few times before having her say it back to me. Then we start with the title and the author. Here's an example of our dialogue:
Me (after having read through the whole poem a few times): "Sweet and Low," by Alfred Lord Tennyson. Say that please."
Lydia: "Sweet and Low, by..."
Me: "Alfred Lord Tennyson"
Lydia: "by Alfred Lord Tennyson"
Me: "Now say the whole thing, Sweet and Low, by Alfred Lord Tennyson"
Lydia: "Sweet and Low by Alfred Lord Tennyson"
Me: "Great. Sweet and low, sweet and low, wind of the western sea."
Lydia: "Sweet and low, wind of the sea."
Me: "Close, but you say Sweet and Low twice and wind of the western sea. So you say, Sweet and low, sweet and low, wind of the western sea."
Lydia: "Sweet and low, sweet and low, wind of the western sea."
Me: "Good, now let's say the whole thing. Sweet and Low, by Alfred Lord Tennyson. Sweet and low, sweet and low, wind of the western sea."
Me: Great! Go ahead and eat your lunch, you did a good job today."
The following day I might read the poem all the way through one and then see if she remembers what we did. I help her along if she gets stuck. Usually we try to do about two lines a day, but sometimes it just takes longer. Often she'll ask or I'll volunteer definitions of words or the meaning of a line. After we did "At the Seaside," she started calling her little plastic shovel a "wooden spade," after I explained that a spade is just like a shovel. Sometimes I'll make a motion or say a line in an over exaggerated way to help her remember. So in "Sweet and Low," it says, "Low, low, breathe and blow." For "breathe" we take a big breathe and lean way back and for "blow" we lean way forward and breathe out as we say the word. Or for D&C 82:10, part of it says, "when you do not what I say, ye have no promise." We always put a big emphasis on the word "not." There's no trick to it, I just always try to make it easier to remember if possible. I also always try to stay in tune with what she seems like she wants to do and don't push it too much on any one day. I want memorization to be enjoyable.
Doing it this way has made it quite painless, and since we always do Lydia's schoolwork immediately after lunch, it is the first subject of the day and never gets forgotten.
We love memorization and I don't see it going to the back burner any time soon!
Monday, June 10, 2013
Weekly Report: Week 34
I haven't written up a weekly report in the last little bit because we took an unscheduled break off of school. I just wasn't feeling like doing it for a little over a week, and since we are ahead in our schedule, we didn't! In that time, we did do about a week's worth of school days, though, so I'm going to say we finished week 34, even though it was spread over a few weeks.
We went to Lake Wedington and had a picnic and played in the sand. The girls recently watched an episode of Daniel Tiger where he played in a sandbox and they wanted to play in a sandbox too. There are sand-filled volleyball courts at the lake, so they played there for over an hour and then we hiked a bit.
We also got to go to Little Sprouts one time. The other week got rained out. But the Wednesday we went was fun because they had a farmer plow a pumpkin patch that the kids are going to plant in a few weeks and we got to watch. Here's a picture of it from Little Sprouts' Facebook page. I'm borrowing their picture because it is pretty difficult to wrestle my three and take pictures at the same time. :)
Adelaide reached a major milestone in the last week or two. She is officially walking! It's about time as she is over a year old. Right now she walks about 50% of the time and crawls the other 50%, but that percentage is going up every day. Give her another month and she'll be a pro.
As for actual schooling subjects...
Reading:
Lydia continues to progress and is completely understanding the concept of silent "e" with long vowels. Right now we're just going through and practicing the sentences. She is still a very slow reader and has difficulty focusing, so it usually takes us 2 days or more to get through a lesson.
Math:
For the last several math lessons, we've been doing lessons of my own creation. It is pretty much the same every day. We started out spending a lot of time building "stairs" with the rods all the way to twenty.
My hope was that by doing this over and over again, she would start to internalize 10 & 2 make 12 and 10 & 10 make twenty. And it is working! She has gotten much, much faster at creating the 1-20 stairs with the rods and she doesn't even need to see the number anymore. When she is done, we "climb" the stairs and then go "down" the stairs, which helps her practice counting forwards and backwards. Then we climb the stairs 2 at a time, which practices counting by twos. Next week we'll climb the stairs starting in the middle, which should help her with "counting on."
I also made a playlist on YouTube of several math songs that count in different ways and we listen/ watch them regularly on our Roku. These seem to be helping, especially with the skip counting.
Today I took out the abacus for the first time in a while and when I explained that each row was 10, she was able to quickly tell me what the teen numbers were, and then helped me count by 2s to 20 and 10s to 100. I'm glad we've been taking this break and think we'll keep it up for a while until she solidly understands all the concepts I'm hoping to help her with.
Handwriting:
She is zooming through HWT Kindergarten. All the practice on the iPad with LetterSchool has really helped her take off with it. We usually do 4 or 5 pages at a time when we practice and she does well with them and is retaining them. We'll probably finish up the book pretty early in Kindergarten.
Spelling:
I am loving All About Spelling. It is working brilliantly for my daughter and I am enjoying teaching it. We are almost done with Step 5.
Memorization:
Lydia is a little more than halfway done with "Sweet and Low," which is the longest poem we've worked on (16 lines!). She likes this one because I've sort of acted it out as we practice, so she does too. I'll have to try to incorporate more of that into our memorization. We also continue to review all her previous memorization on a regular basis, and she has retained everything so far.
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| Eleanor at the lake. |
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| Adelaide missed out on the sandbox but had fun on the blanket with me. |
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| Lazy mom + picnic = Lunchables |
Adelaide reached a major milestone in the last week or two. She is officially walking! It's about time as she is over a year old. Right now she walks about 50% of the time and crawls the other 50%, but that percentage is going up every day. Give her another month and she'll be a pro.
As for actual schooling subjects...
Reading:
Lydia continues to progress and is completely understanding the concept of silent "e" with long vowels. Right now we're just going through and practicing the sentences. She is still a very slow reader and has difficulty focusing, so it usually takes us 2 days or more to get through a lesson.
Math:
For the last several math lessons, we've been doing lessons of my own creation. It is pretty much the same every day. We started out spending a lot of time building "stairs" with the rods all the way to twenty.
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| This is a picture from earlier in the year, but we're doing the same thing. |
I also made a playlist on YouTube of several math songs that count in different ways and we listen/ watch them regularly on our Roku. These seem to be helping, especially with the skip counting.
Today I took out the abacus for the first time in a while and when I explained that each row was 10, she was able to quickly tell me what the teen numbers were, and then helped me count by 2s to 20 and 10s to 100. I'm glad we've been taking this break and think we'll keep it up for a while until she solidly understands all the concepts I'm hoping to help her with.
Handwriting:
She is zooming through HWT Kindergarten. All the practice on the iPad with LetterSchool has really helped her take off with it. We usually do 4 or 5 pages at a time when we practice and she does well with them and is retaining them. We'll probably finish up the book pretty early in Kindergarten.
Spelling:
I am loving All About Spelling. It is working brilliantly for my daughter and I am enjoying teaching it. We are almost done with Step 5.
Memorization:
Lydia is a little more than halfway done with "Sweet and Low," which is the longest poem we've worked on (16 lines!). She likes this one because I've sort of acted it out as we practice, so she does too. I'll have to try to incorporate more of that into our memorization. We also continue to review all her previous memorization on a regular basis, and she has retained everything so far.
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