Memory Work

Sounds old fashioned, right? Well it is! As old as learning your ABC's or your name. Memory work is a must for young kids because they literally absorb facts! Why not get them out of the way now so that down the road they are already on the shelves of their figurative grocery store?
I am employing two great resources for this. The first is the book Living Memory by Andrew Campbell. This provides tons of great memory categories including Latin Proverbs, poems, phrases, and math facts. I also use history facts and dates to keep them reviewing all year. The system is an easy index card box file! You can read about that here.
Soon we will be needing a second box for days 1-31 as we are filling the weekday slots with items we already know well. Is it working? It certainly is! There are times I move things back into more frequent positions but for the most part they are retaining and even my preschooler has blurted out random names like "Beowulf" and "Saxons"! I suggest it for all facts that kids need to study in various subjects. A simple 5 minute review everyday and long, arduous study sessions will be a thing of the past!
What are the merits of doing this though? Well simply put, children need the facts in their minds before they can begin to manipulate them. They need a frame of reference to put history facts into in their mental time lines. Andrew Campbell sums it up this way:
1. Memory is a basic human faculty.
2. Exercising one's memory brings better mental health.
3. Memory implies order.
4. A good memory is a key to writing.
5. To speak well, one must remember well.
6. A good memory is essential to mastering classical subjects like Latin and math.
7. Your memory is your personal laptop.
If your child is trained say by age 7 to know all the addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts wouldn't life be so much easier? Then they can move ahead in learning to understand how math works by without being bogged down by trying to recall the facts. Wouldn't a basis in Latin words help an SAT taker decode unfamiliar vocabulary? Certainly! Even if your child isn't able to recall things off the tip of their tongue, it will be in their mental stores, on a shelf, to be easily accessed at a later time.