Memory Work Monday 03/21/11

A member of The Well-Trained Mind forums decided to blog about memory work on Mondays, and I think it’s a fabulous idea.  It might inspire me to be more conscientious about hearing recitations— I’ve let it slide lately.

This is what The Goobs have memorized since Christmas:

JellyMan

• a good bit of Shakespeare’s As You Like It, including his “All the world’s a stage…” monologue
• the countries/capitals of Europe and Asia
• the seven hills of Rome
• the rooms of a Roman house
• Mozart’s Sonata, K.545 (piano)
• Prospero’s “Ye elves of hills…” from Shakespeare’s The Tempest

Anemone

• American states and capitals
• the countries of Europe
• the rooms of a Roman house
• twenty Roman gods and goddesses
• Clementi’s Sonatina, Op. 36, No. 2 (piano)
• Portia’s “The quality of mercy is not strain’d…” from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice

Not especially impressive, I’ll admit.  We’ll have to pick up the pace if we’re to get through the material I’ve selected for the year.  (Perhaps we’ll go through the summer.)  This week I’ve assigned “Holy Sonnet VII” by John Donne:

At the round earth’s imagined corners blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go ;
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o’erthrow,
All whom war, dea[r]th, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you, whose eyes
Shall behold God, and never taste death’s woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space ;
For, if above all these my sins abound,
‘Tis late to ask abundance of Thy grace,
When we are there.   Here on this lowly ground,
Teach me how to repent, for that’s as good
As if Thou hadst seal’d my pardon with Thy blood. 

We sang this in my high school concert choir, and it was my favorite performance.  Found this on YouTube:

Of course, we were better.  :D

If you’d like, you can read about how we organize our memory work binders.

Memory Work for 2009/2010

We're still plugging along with our memory work notebooks.  Last year we just memorized whatever looked good at the time, but this year I thought I'd make a list and try to stick to it.

United States History/Geography

• Major rivers
• Major mountain ranges
• Great Lakes
• 13 colonies
• 11 states of Confederacy
• 6 regions
• States and capitals
• Major wars
• Bill of Rights

American Poetry

• The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls; Longfellow
• Because I Could Not Stop for Death; Dickinson
• O Captain! My Captain!; Whitman
• Fable; Emerson
• The Road Not Taken; Frost

Religion/Latin/Greek

• Gloria (we're still working on this from last year)
• Ave Maria
• The Magnificat
• Psalm 23
• Kyrie
• Nicene Creed

Science

• ??? (volcanology)
• ??? (oceanography)

The focus on American history, geography and poetry will go nicely with JellyMan's study of American literature.  Unfortunately, Anemone is finishing up a study of Rome and is about to head into the Middle Ages.  If I were a better teacher I'd make a list of memory work just for her, but.  But, but, but.

It's a New Quarter

We're changing things up a little bit this quarter, and I'm so excited!  We have enjoyed using Laura Berquist's The Harp and the Laurel Wreath, but I recently purchased Andrew Campbell's Living Memory, and that has inspired us to make memory work an even bigger part of our homeschool.  Instead of working on their selections a few times a week (basically whenever I remember to remind them) The Goobers will follow their daily Latin recitation with fifteen minutes of memory work.  I will hear recitations on Saturdays. 

To help facilitate this new plan, I dropped some serious cash at Staples.  Each Goober received a new three-ring binder, and not just any binder.  These are the super delux, three inch, four pocket, opens-at-the-merest-touch, $9 binders, in bright orange and grass green, because a jolt of color in the morning does wonders for the soul.  (At least, it does wonders for mine, and if my soul isn't jolted first thing the day tends to go from bad to worse for everyone.)  To fill these binders I purchased two sets of tabbed dividers for each; one set was numbered from 1 to 31, and the other was a plain set of seven.  I purchased the pretty bleached white dividers with the rainbow colored tabs because, well, why not?  All in all, I ended up spending about $60 at Staples, but that was because things like huge novelty alligator clips and an industrial sized bucket of peach rings kept falling into my basket.

Inconsolable, The Man weeps.

I labeled the set of seven dividers as such:

1. Today
2. Monday
3. Tuesday
4. Wednesday
5. Thursday
6. Friday
7. Saturday (I am a heartless ogre and require a six day school week.)

And behind them I filed the dividers marked with the numbers 1 - 31.

I've always had The Goobers copy out their memory work selections in their best handwriting after successfully reciting them, and I've kept them all filed in a section of their Language Arts notebooks.  I pulled all of those and inserted them under random tabs in the new memory binders.

Today is Monday, the 5th of January, so The Goobers reviewed the memory work selections filed behind the Today, Monday, and #5 dividers.  Tomorrow they will review the selections filed behind the Today, Tuesday, and #6 dividers.

I can't tell you how happy I am to have The Harp and the Laurel Wreath and Living Memory on my shelf.  It makes my job so much easier!  I'll never again have to spend an afternoon searching through piles of reference books for memory work suitable for my Goobers, because now I have more than I'll ever need right at my fingertips.  Woo-hoo!