Memorization System Tutorial

These supplies are all you need for making an amazing memorization system.

• 4 x 6 cards
• 42 – 4 x 6 dividers
• 4 x 6 card box
• pencil or pen
• something to memorize

I suggest that you  just purchase the type of dividers that you can write directly on. You will want 42 of them. (I found this set of dividers with a box and cards at a yard sale for $.50, so I’m creating my own labels.)

Label the dividers as follows, one divider for each label.

• Daily
• Odd
• Even
• Monday
• Tuesday
• Wednesday
• Thursday
• Friday
• First week
• Second week
• Third week
• Fourth week
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• and so on all the way up to 30.

Your box should now look like this, minus the card in front. That is our next step. Write out whatever your children have memorized on the 4×6 cards, one passage or poem per card. Better yet, if your children can write, assign them a passage to write and skip handwriting for that day.

Place all of these cards evenly spaced (i.e. one card behind each divider or two cards behind each divider) throughout the whole card file except for the divider labeled “Daily”, the more thoroughly memorized the farther toward the back.

Now copy out any passages, etc. that your children are currently working on and place these behind the divider labeled “Daily”.

This is the hard part. Get this box out EVERY weekday. Recite out loud each card in the “Daily” section AND the cards behind the odd OR the even (i.e. if the date is the 27th then the odd) AND the cards behind the divider with the day of the week that it is, AND the cards behind the week that it is (If it is the 27th recite the cards behind the divider labeled 4th week), AND the cards behind the date (If it is the 27th, recite the cards behind the divider labeled 27). This is much easier to do than it is to read this explanation.

So the idea is that when you have nearly memorized a passage in the “Daily” section, you move it back behind one of the odd or even dividers. When you have no problem recalling that card every other day, move it back to the section with the days of the week, when you can recall it only reviewing once a week, move it to the section labeled “1st, 2nd, week, etc”. This gives you a full week each month of reciting that passage every day and then 3 weeks of not looking at it. When the passage is well in your memory, move it back to the section labeled with the numbers. This will have you reviewing everything you have memorized once a month.

When your numbered section gets too full you can move some cards out of the box all together, just rotate them back through every once and a while.

We recite our memorization box at breakfast each morning. All of the kids working on all the passages together. I just made this second box for my younger children. They will still do the box with the big kids, but I want them to have an opportunity to spend more time learning passages the big kids already know.

For those of you who wish for your children to learn a catechism this is how we do it. I keep the Shorter Catechism in our box and then I write a card like this “SC 26-30″ This means we will be reciting the Shorter Catechism questions 26-30, we look it up in the book and I don’t have to write out all of those questions.

You may also be interested in my post Bible Memorization for Kids, where I write about what and how our children memorize and include some of the other tools that we use to help with memory work.

Read more Works For Me Wednesday posts at We Are THAT Family. You can see my other WFMW by clicking the WFMW category located just under the picture at the top of the page or check out my  homeschooling posts .

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