Self Education

The philosophical portion of our meeting in January is supposed to be spent discussing 'Self Education'. An intriguing topic for anyone involved in education of any sort.

With perfect timing, Christine has posted an item about Self Education on her blog, The Real Life Home, as part of her Charlotte Mason Basics series on Fridays. You might like to head over to The Real Life Home and have your appetite whetted for the meeting that's to come. As always, Christine is direct, humourous, and engaging, while offering lots of valuable insight into the subject.

Other than this, I'm pretty sure this blog will be quiet until after Christmas, or maybe into the new year, so, on behalf of the entire leadership team:

Blessed Christmas to all.

On Memorization

For anyone who has tried to memorize extended passages, be they Scripture, poetry, Shakespeare, or whatever, it quickly becomes clear that the "say a line over and over until you know it and then add another line" method really doesn't work. Nor does trying to cram it into the mind quickly before being 'tested' on it (as I and so many others I know did for English class and Sunday School); the words are there for the 'test' but fly out the window of the mind as soon as the direct attention to remembering is done.

This fall my children and I worked on memorizing a parable. Sixteen verses of Scripture. Not a huge chunk, by any means, but one of several longer portions that we've done as a family. Our memorization method was simple. I read the passage out loud every morning after breakfast, and again (most days) after lunch. Sometimes I'd read it a couple of times, but mostly just once. When it was quite familiar, I would sometimes pause part way through a line and let them finish the sentence, which they did quite easily, quite naturally, and quite happily. By the end of a month my two eldest children (12 and 6) and I could recite the passage without error. Now, almost 2 months after completing our memorization, we can still do it!

This week there is a new post on the ChildLight USA blog on memorization. Tina Fillmer has written an interesting piece entitled Memorization "Learnt Without Labour". I hope you will take a couple of minutes to read her article. It fit so well with my family's experience this fall that I felt I ought to share the news.

If you're interested, you can read about my family's experiences memorizing the parable by visiting PeaceLedge and clicking on the 'memorization' topic on the left.

Thanks to Laurel and Christine for facilitating the meeting yesterday, and to Karen for opening her home to us so beautifully.

But even more, thanks to all of you who contribute so much to the conversation each evening. Yesterday's talks about the Science of Relations and Narration were engaging partly because of the participation of so many people. I love hearing how other people work Charlotte Mason's principles into their homes and home education;the questions, too, indicate the search that we are all participating in to some degree or another. I appreciate how much people are doing to make themselves vulnerable as those questions are brought out.

What a wonderful group we have! Blessings abound!!