What do you require your children to memorize and do you have a system? How do you decide what to memorize?
So far we work on memory verses. I’m trying to think for the future, though. Do you do poetry? Math?
We don’t do a lot of memorization anymore, mainly because it’s hard to do spontaneous memorization and the kid seems resistant to it now (and we don’t push). But the method that worked when we were learning bunches of nursery rhymes and songs was just to repeat the rhymes over and over again ourselves, and eventually the kid just started spitting them back. That’s how he got to this point:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWvI_AWaorg
Maybe we could keep doing that, and maybe we should!
I never stop to think about memorization, but know, i will change my way to see that point
I guess prayers would be first on the list as this is done consistently, every night… For the time being we say two prayers (one ‘made up’ 
and a proper one) but this will increase with time as my daughter asks for more.
Then we’ve started playing memory cards. She’s getting good at it (two cards only), hoping to increase to 3 soon.
We also do prayers and recitation of Quran every night - in a similar fashion to DadDude, my son has learnt various verses of Quranic arabic purely through repetition. For him it helps if we are running around at the same time!
I do also use memory cards every day. Besides that the letter sequences of her name; Nursery rhymes and prayers.
My mom made my sister and I memorize the whole book of Psalms from the Holy Bible. I can say it has really helped me…I have photographic memory that astounded many of my classmates from my doctoral program.
Jewish boys memorize the 1st 5 book of the Bible by 12 or 13 yo., and many of them are very smart…lawyers and doctors.
Will try Proverbs from the Bible when my son is older. I think kids can start memorizing at 2-3yo…that’s the age my sis and I started.
:blink: How do you do that???
Memory is like a muscle, when exercised it improves.
You can look into the memory train exercises, which enables you to memorize a very very long sequence of things (like objects), by making up a story that links the objects together. This technique is a commonly-used one (like in Shichida and Right Brain Kids), and one good thing about it is that it uses your child’s powers of imagination.
Search “memory” in these Forums and you should find some other threads talking about this.
http://www.excellenceinwriting.com/PMC
Linguistic Development Through Poetry Memorization (Book & CDs) â€
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Level(s):
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We just finished Usborne’s “The Illustrated Alice” (highly recommend this new line of Usborne illustrated books) and my son got a big kick out of “Jabberwocky.” We memorized the first stanza just by me reading it several times and then I told him to repeat after me, line by line. He was game to try. He more or less had it after that, with prompting in a few places.
my son has memorized tons of things just from hearing them a few times, he’ll always surprise me with what he comes up with, suddenly singing a song I had no idea he knew or saying the end to a prayer, etc. I love how their minds work and how they pick up things so quickly. I’ve never worked with him on his memorization, he just has an incredible memory at this age.
Little children can learn to memorize anything! I love memorization. As part of our homeschool the children have to read their lessons everyday until the know them by heart. These lessons include poems, Bible verses and Math facts. It takes just a few minutes a day to do and within a week or two they know them by heart. When one of my girls was 6 years old, or 5, she choose The Tiger by William Blake. I thought it was too long for her but she proved me wrong. She learned the whole poem, and so did I, just from listening to her.
When my 2nd child was 2, I would read a Psalm to her before bed. Within 2 days she was filling in the last words of each verse. Within a week or so she knew the whole thing. She shocked my mom at the playground one day when she recited Psalm 24, Psalm 1 and the Our Father.
Their minds are just waiting to absorb. We can decide what we want them to absorb. They will memorize entire lines from favorite movies, songs, books or poetry. This is a perfect time to teach them things. That is why I like the First Language Lessons book. It teaches them the definitions of all the parts of speech. It has some short poems for them to memorize.
I have found the younger my child, the better they can memorize. I have noticed when we play match it games that whichever is my youngest, they are always the best player. This is inspirational to me and makes me want to fill them up with useful information.