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Memorization Ideas for Kids


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We've memorized the 1st part of the Gettysburg Address. My 8 year old delights in this. She likes quoting lines from Shakespeare as well. Shel Silverstein poems tickle her pink. She's got the 50 states down alphabetically. Next week we'll work on pi.

 

I believe memorizing is a good skill to have and helps develop other skills. So long as it's a 'no pressure' atmosphere and couched in meaning (the reciter knows what s/he's saying), I'm digging this new pleasure and mental exercise. What other things are good to memorize? What speeches, poems, verses, etc. do you have your young kids commit to memory?

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I've got music history on the brain, that's why I suggest this - when I was in high school, taking music history, we were taught mnemonic tag lines to the famous pieces of music we were supposed to recognize. Little ditties that matched the melodies. So for Eine Kleine Nachtmusik we learned "Eine kleine nachtmusik is this! Written by Herr Mozart, not Herr Liszt!" and for Haydn's Surprise Symphony we learned "Papa Haydn's dead and gone, but his music still lives on. When you hear this melody, you will be SURPRISED" and... oh, I don't know, there were lots of them. I can't hear Mozart's 40th without thinking "I'm not Bach, I'm not Brahms, I am Mozart" and so on. There must be some resource out there with simply scads and scads of these, and if it isn't exactly useful information to have at the tips of your brain, well, at least it does train you to remember things!

 

My parents, at your daughter's age, had us memorize world capitals. Whenever I look back on my childhood, I think of Pippi Longstocking saying that if you're so determined to know the capital of Portugal, you should write to them and ask directly. But that's all right, she's been to Lisbon with her Papa. That knowledge has never come in handy. Not once. Nobody has ever called upon me to tell them the capital of anything. (And yet, I only accidentally memorized that 7! is 5040, and that was astonishingly useful at the most surprising time! So I guess you never know.)

 

Edited by Tanaqui
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My kids have learned the Preamble to the Constitution, beginning of the Declaration of Independence, presidents, poetry, bible verses, states and capitals.

 

WTM has suggestions in the book too.

The Preamble is a good one! We started that during Constitution week. I played the Schoolhouse Rock song for that, which was catchy. Edited by Earthmerlin
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I've got music history on the brain, that's why I suggest this - when I was in high school, taking music history, we were taught mnemonic tag lines to the famous pieces of music we were supposed to recognize. Little ditties that matched the melodies. So for Eine Kleine Nachtmusik we learned "Eine kleine nachtmusik is this! Written by Herr Mozart, not Herr Liszt!" and for Haydn's Surprise Symphony we learned "Papa Haydn's dead and gone, but his music still lives on. When you hear this melody, you will be SURPRISED" and... oh, I don't know, there were lots of them. I can't hear Mozart's 40th without thinking "I'm not Bach, I'm not Brahms, I am Mozart" and so on. There must be some resource out there with simply scads and scads of these, and if it isn't exactly useful information to have at the tips of your brain, well, at least it does train you to remember things!

 

My parents, at your daughter's age, had us memorize world capitals. Whenever I look back on my childhood, I think of Pippi Longstocking saying that if you're so determined to know the capital of Portugal, you should write to them and ask directly. But that's all right, she's been to Lisbon with her Papa. That knowledge has never come in handy. Not once. Nobody has ever called upon me to tell them the capital of anything. (And yet, I only accidentally memorized that 7! is 5040, and that was astonishingly useful at the most surprising time! So I guess you never know.)

Pippi's a hoot! Thanks for the music idea! We geek out on that stuff!

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So far we've done:

 

Nursery rhymes

The Jabberwocky

I'm Nobody (Emily Dickinson)

The Flag (William Bennett)

Months of the year poem

Verb endings

Noun cases

Newton's Laws

 

Next year we'll be tying more to history rather than the simple sentences we've done:

The beginning of the Declaration

The Preamble

Washington's Rules of Civility (only a handful)

 

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My kids have learned the Preamble to the Constitution, beginning of the Declaration of Independence, presidents, poetry, bible verses, states and capitals.

 

WTM has suggestions in the book too.

Sorry, perhaps I overlooked it but I don't see a list mentioned in the book for this age set (8 years old). Do you know which page or section?

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Sorry, perhaps I overlooked it but I don't see a list mentioned in the book for this age set (8 years old). Do you know which page or section?

In a quick skim thorough my 2nd? edition, pages 116 and 117 has memory suggestions for 2nd and 3rd grade related to history.

 

Page 794 of the index lists some other pages where memorization is discussed.

 

I don’t have my 4th edition handy, but I’m sure it contains similar information.

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Yes! Great idea! Is this found on YouTube?

 

I'm not RoseM.... 

 

But thinking she meant the ASAP Science version on youtube.  My kids have loved learning this.  We converted it to mp3 and play it in the van.  

 

Our version is a couple of years older than what I see now (not the "updated 2018") , but for our version you can find slower recordings out there, and an instrumental-only version too.  

Edited by Lotsoflittleducklings
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Elements Song by Tom Lehrer. Just search for it on YouTube and it’ll pop up. There’s even a video of Daniel Radcliffe singing it. As if I couldn’t love Harry Potter any more! :)

 

I wanted to 2nd (or 3rd?) IEW’s Linguistic Development through Poetry collection. Level One has some great age-appropriate poems for the younger set. I’ve been working through it with my DS8 and he’s already got some 35 poems under his belt.

 

I admit that Level 2 of the IEW program has some poems that didn’t inspire us so I switched them out with more whimsical selections from Fujikawa’s A Child’s Book of Poems. I also supplemented with poems by diverse authors since the poets in Level 2 are predominantly white males. I used Poetry Foundation’s website to find some good ones.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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  • 4 weeks later...

We've memorized:

the poems in IEW's Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization
grammar lists -- prepositions, Shurley English jingles
Declaration of Independence
Gettysburge Address
chapters of scriptures (Psalm 1, 8, 19, 23, 51; Romans 8, 12; 1 Cor 13; Phillipians 2; etc)
 

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