How I Organize My Memory Work at Home

This post was originally published on Everyday Snapshots, my personal blog.

You can read more about how we do Morning Time in this post.

Another nuts and bolts post here, but this little gem has already been worth its weight in gold, and we are only on week four of the school year. Meet the new Morning Time Binder. Ta-da!

Isn't it just the loveliest thing ever? Ok, most of the loveliness is in the practicality. Let me give you a tour.

The Morning Time Agenda
This is key. I can't tell you how many times I will forget to do something altogether without my list. Like I said before, Morning Time goes pretty quickly around here as we jump from topic to topic. This list helps me make sure I haven't left anything out. As you can see, I have already started penciling in new topics. It will be in flux for about a month or so and then I will nail it down and retype it.

On to the Memory Work
The meat of the binder is basically the Simply Charlotte Mason memory system in binder form. I chose binder over card file, because I wanted to be able to insert complete pages of information, not just single poems or verses of scripture. So I have a tab for daily, even days, odd days, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then all the days of the month. I only have the one binder for myself. The kids learn all of the memory work by listening.

Side note: I found tabs that would allow you to use page protectors and still see the tabs. They stick out far beyond the protector. This was important to me, because I wanted the sheets of memory work to be protected for a long time, but I also wanted to be able to see the tabs!

New memory work always sits under the daily tab. Once it is mastered, it then moves to review -- first on an even or odd day, next once a week, and finally once a month.

So what do we memorize?
We have been using Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization from IEW since last year. We really like the poems and up until the end of last year we were using it exactly as written -- reciting every poem every day. The poems are a varied selection between short and long, serious and fun. The best part is -- it's all done for me. I do have the CDs. I bought them at the homeschool convention last March. As of right now we are finding them totally unnecessary, but that's just us.

Next on our list of memory items is co-op memory work. Every two weeks we get new memory work in various subjects -- very similar to Classical Conversations (CC) or Classically Catholic Memory (CCM) -- because in fact the memory work comes from both of those two sources. The memory work is introduced to the kids at the co-op, and then we review it at home.

Finally I have a few other things to add to the binder. One goal this year is to memorize the books of the Bible. Catechism and scripture are on the list, and I spent a recent evening at the bookstore thumbing through How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare. I found this book incredibly inspiring, and I can't wait to start memorizing for the kids to start memorizing Shakespeare. You better believe the Bard is about to go in the binder, even if we take it really slow and only learn a new piece per term.

A poetry page. We know both of these, so we are repeating all daily. We are almost done with the poems on the back, so the page will move soon. Notice how beat-up the pages are from last year. Those page protectors are so important.

But isn't it a lot? 
It is! Especially since we were doing the every-poem-every-day method, and we were up to about ten poems. Something had to give.

Now for the scary part: I cut the binding off of my Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization. (Ack! I know!) Now all of the old poems we know are in the binder and are reviewed according to the SCM system instead of the "every poem every day system" that Pudewa uses. I had to do this, simply because of the volume of memory work we do -- it was either that or drop the poems, which I didn't want to do.

What I did not do was separate the poems from their pages. A page (front and back) is a unit of memory work. So as an example, right now we are memorizing "The Whole Duty of Children" by Robert Lewis Stevenson. This poem is behind our "Daily" tab. That means the other three poems on the front and back of the page with that poem are also repeated daily even though we know them pretty well. The poems will move through the system as a unit. 

This does not mean that I introduce them as a unit, though. When we put a fresh page in and start learning the first poem on that page, we focus on one stanza at a time until it is pretty familiar. So for a long while there might be a page in our daily tab, but we are only having to recite a stanza or two from it.

All other memory work is also introduced in the daily tab. Right now we are doing four poems and a page of co-op memory work each day. Tomorrow (Tuesday) we will get new co-op memory work. That means the old co-op memory work will move to the even tab. Even days we will be doing two pages of co-op memory work and our page of poems. Odd days the new co-op memory work and the poems only. It's a bit, but I believe it is worth it. There are few things more beneficial in training the brain than memory work, and I think our schools are far worse off for letting it slide.

A page of co-op memory work. Since our group is eucmenical we don't do religion at co-op, but I do add it at home.

My plan right now is to memorize the co-op work by week until about week 10. Then after that time, all of the old weekly sheets will be removed from the binder (wherever they may be in the system -- daily, weekly, monthly), and I will replace those with by-subject sheets. This means that we will be reciting all ten weeks of science together and all ten weeks of history together. There is no magic formula for when this should occur -- it just so happens that I have the memory work already typed up ten weeks to a page. Why switch? Well one of the goals is for the kids to be able to tell the story of a historical period in about forty sentences. Grouping the memory work by subject will help with that.

So by now your eyes are crossing
And you are wondering how it the world I get my kids to do all of this each day without all-out mutiny. Kids hate this stuff, right? Not really. For the most part, they do love to memorize and are very good at it. They like being very good at something too! Here are a few things that help, though.

1) It's a together thing. I do not typically quiz them on the memory work (per se -- see below). Iused to do that. I would open the page and have them recite (usually alone) and tell them where they were right or wrong. Major fail. Now we open the binder, and I do it with them. My only rule is that your mouth be moving, because you really don't remember if all you do is listen.

2) We have Funday Mondays. I got this from another CC mom last year whom I now can't remember to link to. On Mondays we play a review game with the co-op portion of our memory work. It takes a little longer, but they think it is fun. Come to think of it, I should probably just add the poems in here too. There are tons of great review games online. Check out Half A Hundred Acre Wood for an awesome list.

3) We use songs. If there is a song, I play it. I keep iTunes playlists of things we are memorizing on my iPhone. Most of the songs come from CC and CCM Cds. There are a few I have arranged myself or found on Amazon. The kids love the songs.

4) We get silly. We use these cards made for phonics chants in our memory work practice. The kids pull a card and then we recite poems in pirate speak, volcano voice, or while doing jumping jacks. Oh my gosh they love these. (I don't mind as long as we don't pull jumping jacks for a four stanza poem.)

And that's it. I do wish we had this system last year for all of our CC memory work. They have forgotten so much of that. Now we can learn our memory work going forward and retain it through the use of the binder.

Questions?
I know some of this makes perfect sense to me and comes across clear as mud to you. Please ask if you have a question. It may take a day or two, but I am always happy to answer.

How We Started Our Own Classical Co-op

Last fall a group of friends got together and decided to give our kids an opportunity to learn together in a classical education co-op. We pull from a variety of classical memory work based curriculum to create a unique opportunity for our kids that is unlike anything else I have seen in person or online. It was a ton of work, but the outcome has been so worth the effort.

Because there were not many resources available online for how to make this happen, I thought I would outline our set-up here. We did find some other classical co-op websites online during our research phase and did find those helpful, but largely there is not much information out there about how people out together their own co-op. I just have to say that we are so blessed to have the families that we have in our co-op. We have eight families, all found by word of mouth, who are totally committed to this method of education, this co-op, and the awesome things we are doing with our kids. I had a fabulous "partner in crime" co-director who was just as crazy as I and worked long, hard hours last year to see this to fruition.

The Materials and Scope

We decided that our co-op would use a combination of Classical Conversations and Classically Catholic Memory (we are using Beta this year) materials. Yes, this means that each family has to purchase both programs and both music CDs, but but we think it is worth it to get the best of both. Our group is eucemenical, so the mix of both programs is perfect for us. At any rate, all specific religious instruction is left for the home. Though we are an unabashedly Christian co-op, the memory work is merely presented at co-op. How each family chooses to elaborate on the material is up to them. Here is what we take from each program and why:

Timeline -- Classical Conversations. Largely because of the fabulous timeline cards and song which make it so easy to remember.

English Grammar - Classical Conversations - there is no English grammar in CCM.

Latin - A mixture of both programs. CC has mostly grammar. CCM many prayers and songs.

Math - Classical Conversations (though the math in both programs is basically the same).

History - Classically Catholic Memory. Why? They follow a four-year cycle which lines up with popular curriculum like Story of the World, RC History, or Mystery of History and basically every classical history reading list on the web. This makes is really easy for families to integrate the history memory work right into their studies, and it not be something additional they are making time for (which was hugely important to us). We have found the CCM memory work to be very neutral in its presentation and accessible to even non-Catholic families.

Science - Classically Catholic Memory. I think the science is the strength of this program. There are multiple science experiments and projects in the teacher's guide that correlate with the science memory work for the week. To me, this was one of the weaknesses of CC, the science experiments had nothing to do with the memory work. This is a win for us. Memory work plus experiments equals context and fun!

Great Words - Classically Catholic Memory - there is no Great Words subject in CC.

Geography - Classically Catholic Memory, because the geography is aligned with the history each year.

Our co-op is completely volunteer run and each family currently pays for their students in our kindergarten and grammar-aged groups (we capped our group at grade six this year, but will begin to expand next year as we have families waiting for our upper grades program). The cost of the program is very affordable, covering supplies and a love-offering to our host church.

The Schedule

We decided to follow the Classically Catholic Memory practice of introducing new memory work every other week. I quickly found out last year with CC that after about week seven we really got behind with the memory work never to get caught up again. A new set of memory work every week for twenty-four weeks was just too much to remember. With our program we have twenty weeks of memory work that is introduced every two weeks during the school year. This gives the kids two weeks to work on committing everything to memory before they are bombarded with new material.

So what about the weeks in between? Well we take a break mid-term each semester. And at the end of each semester we have a Christmas party or a pool party. As for the other "in-between weeks" we came up with something we call "Enrichment Weeks." These were supposed to be optional weeks that families could choose to participate in or skip, but we are finding that no one wants to skip them.

A Typical Week

Class Week - We have class week every other week. During class week, we look almost exactly like a CC community. Almost.

We begin our morning with an opening. The opening is large-group with everyone participating. We pray and recite the pledge, and then we go over the new timeline cards, motions and song. This is a fun, fast-moving time. Then we break up into our small groups.

The babies head off to the nursery with a volunteer mom while our "Pages" go to class with Miss Teresa and her assistant. Pages are our kindergarten class of four and five year olds. In their class they are studying the science of the week at their level, as well as exploring geography and cultures through stories, art, food, and activities. While Classical Conversations starts memory work at age four, we felt that was too young and our littles would have a fantastic experience with this type of program instead. They would hear things that would then be repeated at home in the memory work, but they would be free to play a bit and learn to be in a classroom setting in an a hands-on way.

We have two grammar classes this year. Our younger group is the "Squires" and the older group the "Knights." These groups spend the day traveling between three different teachers for fine arts (this term it is drawing), science (experiments, projects and the memory work) and memory clases (all other memory work). They also do brief oral presentations during snack time. They love that part of the day.

As a note, our fine arts will be one quarter of drawing, one quarter of music appreciation, one quarter of art appreciation (with art projects), and one quarter of music theory and singing. We decided to hire a teacher to teach the last class.

These two classes come back together at the end of the day to play a review game of all the current and previous weeks' memory work. After that we end the day with lunch and fellowship.

We have a dedicated teacher for each class, plus a teacher (and planner extraordinaire) for the kindergarten class. Mom volunteers have split the fine arts terms (and planned the lessons!) and also spend time as kindergarten aide, nursery worker, and snack coordinators. Like I said, we are incredibly blessed that everyone is so committed to this endeavor.

Enrichment Week - Every other week we have Enrichment. These weeks were designed to give extra time to learn memory work and to do those things that most homeschool moms would really like to get to, but never seem to. Enrichment week is a little crazier as there is no nursery or separate classes. Moms volunteer to take younger students out to play as the older ones work on projects. Honestly I worried about chaos during this time, but so far it has been fabulous. This is what a day looks like.

Once again we start off as a large group where we pray, pledge, and review the previous week's timeline cards and the timeline song to date. Still in large group we do hymn study. One of our moms introduces a new hymn each month, giving us the backstory and telling what it is about. Each class we learn a new verse for the hymn and review old ones.

Next we move to our history projects. These are the big, messy things moms love to plan but hate to do with one or two students. This year we are making our own books, Robin Hood caps, candle dipping, coat of arms, reader's theater, medieval food and so much more. So far the kids have been eating it up. At the end of the year all of these projects will culminate in a big medieval festival which dads and grandparents can attend.

After history projects everyone takes a breather while the kids snack and play a review game on the previous weeks' memory work. You really can't do this too often.

The time slot after that is for either handicrafts or nature study depending on the term. Our handicrafts vary from week to week this year and in nature study we are learning about spiders and birds.

We sent out a sign-up sheet at the beginning of the year and each mom signed up to lead four projects during enrichment weeks. The mom got a bag of instructions and supplies, did the project in advance to be sure it would work, and did any research needed to flesh out the topic for the kids. So far these presentations by the moms have blown me away. There have been Power Point presentations, props, and picture books used to teach the kids more about the projects as we do them.

Heart of our Homeschool

Co-op is quality social time for sure, but we did not want it to be only that. For us, co-op serves as the heart of our homeschool. We all use our own curriculum to teach the basic skills at home, but for these youngsters all we have to add to the co-op is some related reading and maybe a little notebooking and we have complete science and history programs that mostly gets done on Tuesdays each week. I just love this.

So far we are loving every minute. In fact we have already started planning next year and will expand to include an afternoon Arts of Language class for older elementary/junior high age students and a morning class for junior high age students as well.

If you have any questions about the details, I would love to answer them in the comments or via email. If co-op is something you would like to do but you can't find any nearby that meet your needs I encourage you to start your own even if you have to start small. This is such a blessing to our family; I just can't say enough good about it.