Memory Master, Knowing and Making Things Known

Today Michaela achieved Memory Master, which is an honor signifying that the student has committed all of the information from the twenty-four week Classical Conversations class to memory and can recite it with relative ease. This took a lot of work on her part, and I often was not involved in her memorization; she took it upon herself to do this. The student who is working toward this goal has to memorize all along. Trying to cram it all in one's brain at the end would be overwhelming and also would most likely not result in long-term memorization. I am pretty proud of her for deciding that she would accomplish this goal, and then doing what she needed to do in order to achieve it. 

She has a lot of information in her brain. At the beginning of the year, the tutors in the girls' classes would encourage the students by saying,"We're going to train your brain to retain!" Using songs and good old repetition, all of these facts are becoming firmly implanted in their minds. (Mine too! I learned so much myself!) This memorization of facts is associated with the Grammar Stage of educating children (and apparently Christina). The grammar of a subject is the fundamental and basic info, the bones of a subject. The next stage is called the Logic Stage, which technically Michaela has entered (honestly, she may have been born in this stage...it's scary how much she is like her dad when it comes to how she thinks about things). I have not been so great (in spite of really good intentions...sigh, ugh, sigh) at moving from the Grammar Stage into the Logic Stage. But knowing how much she has learned, and how she is so ready to move forward and begin filling out those bare bones with the meaty part of history and literature and science, makes me renew my committment to the task. It is time to take the massive amount of orderly facts and give them life, relationships and consequences. 

History is exciting. I know that now, and I wish that I had known it when I was younger and in school myself. I hope that it is not too late to help her not only enjoy what she is learning, but the learning itself, and to see the purpose of it all: to be able to know God better and to passionately share that knowledge with others.

Comments

[Chandra]

Congratulations, Michaela, on a lot of hard work well done!

[Missy]

Yay for your Michaela! And you are a wonderful model of a mama, lady. You are!!!