What Memorisation Looks Like in Our House

Memory work we call it here! Some years look different to others, but I just wanted to share what it looks like at the moment.

There are two different ways and times in the day that we cover memory work:

1. During our Morning Basket first in the day, we cover passages of scripture, some from Psalms, hymns, and miscellaneous memory items.
2. Once the girls are working on their independent work for the day, they have their own personal folder of memory work that they are working on.

First our Morning Basket – I went into detail in my blog post, so click here if you would like to read more. Briefly, this is what we will do today:

1. Psalm 1 – the girls can recite the first three verses without my help. Once they get stuck, I join in, so usually around verse four. I read through the whole Psalm, and they join in wherever they can. We usually begin a new Psalm at the beginning of each term, regardless of how much we have learned.
2. Psalm 91 – I am reading this whole passage, and they join in with any sections they know.
3. Then we review a Psalm we have already learnt. I have a sticky flag on the revision Psalm we are up to and I move the flag each day, so today it will be Psalm 127, tomorrow Psalm 23.
4. Philippians 4:4-9 – this passage is a little more difficult, some verses they know, others we are still learning, but they do not know any verses in set order like they do in Psalms, yet! Each day, I continue to read the passage aloud and they join in wherever they can. We usually begin a new passage at the beginning of each term.
5. Review a passage – same process as with Psalms – today’s will be Exodus 20:1-17
6. Hymns New – we are learning Christmas hymns this month. Normally though, we would learn a new hymn each month, just adding one new verse each week. So in actuality, we only learn four verses of a hymn before moving on. I figure that is more than they would be learning if we didn’t do it at all! 🙂 So the first week of the month, we sing the first verse along with YouTube and the lyrics ;). Then the second week, we will sing the first and second verses, third week, first, second and third verses. I think you get what I mean 🙂
7. Hymn review – rotate my sticky flag through our learned hymns and sing one from this section each day. We don’t sing hymns regularly at our church, so as my girls are not getting the exposure there, I decided to teach them from home. I didn’t want them missing out on the many benefits of knowing several great hymns.
8. Books of the Bible – a couple of years ago we learnt the books of the Bible. So every couple of weeks, I will choose one girl to recite the Old Testament books first. They will all take a turn and see how far they can get. Then we recite them all together all the way through to Malachi. Some days we will sing the New Testament books to a tune I learnt when I was a child 🙂
9. Poems – We recite what we know altogether, then I add in the next poem. Once we know that one, I will add the next. I haven’t been consistent with this, so we don’t have a lot in this section. I came across Linguistic Development Through Poetry Memorization published by IEW, you can read the sample here. I agreed with what I read so I now include these poems here. So far we have learned or are learning
   • Ooey Gooey
   • Celery
   • The Little Man Who Wasn’t There
   • The Vulture
10. Grammar Stage Memorisation compiled by Hannah Wilson. I have sticky flagged the sections we are working on, and yes this changes as the year progresses too. There are so many sections in this resource. Currently, this is what we are doing:
    • Daddy and Mummy’s phone number
    • Nursery Rhymes – I am surprised at how many they know, even though we didn’t do many of these when they were little.
    • Hmmm… I do have lots more flagged in here but we aren’t doing them this term.

And that is how we cover memory work as a group. Even though it looks like a lot, it only takes between 15 and 20 minutes.

Now later in the morning, they have their own personal ‘pink’ folder (we love pink here) that contains their own memory work. They all have poems from First Language Lessons in their folder. Plus any others that they may have learnt.

So looking at my oldest’s folder, I realise that I haven’t actually added her other poems that she learnt on her own earlier this year, I had better get onto that lest she forget them! This is what she currently has in her folder:

• Crossing the Bar by Aldred Lord Tennyson
• The Caterpillar
• Work
• Hearts Are Like Doors
• Days of the Week
• The Months
• Monday, Mommy Baked a Cake
• Mr. Nobody
• The Goops
• And others that is about to learn.

Then flip the folder over and at the other end is her scripture memory.

• Psalm 103
• Revelation 22:1-7
• Psalm 84 (not sure how she ended up with two Psalms)

As these are longer passages, and they are not being recited as a group, I will leave her to learn those before adding new ones, unlike the group work that I change each term.

During the mornings work, the girls each take their folder to a quiet part of the house and recite aloud their work, learning new sections. On Fridays, however, instead of doing this on their own, they recite for me 🙂 I love to hear how far they have come in the past week. And they love to show me their accomplishments too!

Hope this has inspired you with memory work for your children. Please ask me any questions via email or in the comments below. I would love to encourage you to start or revamp a memory system for your children.