Evaluating our School Year: Memory Work [with links to all other memory work posts]

This post is part of a series I'm doing as a way to evaluate our school year.  I am covering each subject, describing what we did; what worked for us and what didn't work; and detailing any changes I plan to make.  I find this process so helpful as I finish out our year and before I begin to plan for our next year.  

If you're just joining us for this series, so far I've covered:
Evaluating our School Year: Poetry 
Evaluating our School Year: Bible Time
Evaluating our School Year: Prayer

~

Memory Work
Memory work is anything we memorize throughout the school year, so I guess poetry and hymns  could fall beneath this heading, too, but I have those listed separately on our schedule.  We've done all sorts of things within this category in previous years, including photos of famous landmarks, a catechism, creeds, and lots and lots of Scripture.

For several years we used this format:

I wrote our verses out on index cards and sometimes doodled pictures to go with them, and then we'd pull one or two out each day and work on memorizing them.

Now that we're memorizing longer passages this isn't quite as practical, but I still do index cards for the single verses we memorize.

For our longer passages, I type it out and then print out a page for each child.  Those get tucked into page protectors (to keep spills and dirty fingers off the paper, since we do Morning Time at breakfast) and put them all into the Morning Time binder.  When we get to Memory Work on the schedule, I then pass a sheet out to each child.

We do Memory Work daily, and each morning we do a REVIEW verse (or two), as well as a NEW verse (or two).  I'll start by reading the verses, and then a few days in I'll ask who thinks they can tackle it.

When I think we have the verse down-- after maybe a week or two, we'll move on.
For a longer passage, we will do all the previous learned verses as review and then tag on a new verse each day.  I also will sometimes write up the longer passages on our dry erase board so they're visible at other times of the day for our readers.

***

This is what we memorized this year:

From the Bible:
Psalm 19*
Psalm 33:5*
Psalm 105:1-45
Proverbs 15:28
Proverbs 18:21
Luke 2:1-20
Luke 6:45

Other memory work:
Books of the Old Testament*
Family Ways (1-21)--I used Clay and Sally Clarkson's book Our 24 Family Ways and edited them for our family, changing up the wording sometimes, adding some, and omitting some altogether.
 

(*The starred ones refer to passages|memory work we reviewed from a previous year.)

Heading into Christmastime, we memorized Luke2:1-20.  I split up the verses like this and the kids each had a copy and they would draw or doodle a picture for each verse.  They LOVED this, so we'll try to do this again.

Memorizing is really tricky for Adelia (8), in particular.  She needs a lot of help from us in "feeding" her the words; the lines.  This can be a bit exasperating for the rest of us, because 1)she is always the first to volunteer for anything and 2)she really wants to have her own turn to recite the twelve verses she's "memorized", but she really doesn't know it well at all and it can be a bit pain-staking and require much patience from us.  (It came up in my end-of-the-year evaluations with one of the older kids, which is why I'm mentioning it.)

This is one of those things that's challenging about having younger kids and older kids in the mix.  I want my older kids to be challenged, but the younger girls sort of need things on their level, too.  However, we're doing it all together and even when the girls are allowed to "opt out" of something, they don't want to, because they want to be big and do what their older siblings are doing.  Which works fine most of the time but sometimes it doesn't.  Oh well.  This is one of those times where the Lord in His perfect wisdom is growing us all in patience and in bearing with one another.  ;)

***

Apparently I've written a lot about our memory work.  Apparently it's my favorite thing or something, because this next list took me quite awhile to put together.  So.  Here is a list of my other memory work posts, if you're interested:


from 2006:
A Favorite: ABC Bible Verses
Our Memory Verses

from 2007, with a list of easy-to learn verses: 
Scripture Memorization,

from 2010:
Memory Work Box
Memorizing our Theme Passage (with links to some of our favorite Scripture-memory CDs)
Ten Verses Cards (when I chose ten different verses for each child to memorize)
Verses for a Two-Year-Old

from 2011:
Honoring Daddy (when we put into practice one of the verses we'd been memorizing)
2010-11 Year in Review: Memory Work

from 2013:
First day of School (with pictures of some of our catechism cards)

from 2014:
Our Simple Schedule, Part 3: (Bible, memory work, poetry)

from 2016:
Mid-year Morning Time Review

Also, here is a link to some FREE printable ABC Scripture Memory Cards that another mom created, if you don't want to put together your own.  ;)