More puttering with paperwork this weekend, but I think it was time well spent. Ed indulged me and let me buy Living Memory, a newly published, 450 page collection of pieces for memorization which includes poetry, but also Latin, Greek, math, grammar, Bible verses, creeds, hymns, speeches, and even a little science. It includes a description of and an internet link to pages for a system for practicing memory work which I think will be much superior to what we have been doing. In past years, we have memorized quite a bit which we have then failed to review with any kind of regularity, and which the kids now seem to have largely forgotten. Since we started on IEW's Poetry program, we have practiced the pieces in it most days, and of course the children are retaining these things very well. But many of the shorter poems they now know so well that daily or even every other day practice is not really necessary, and the program's checklist system is something that I never seem to get around to.
So... Enter our New System! The whole thing is laid out here. Basically, each child has a notebook with a "Daily" section, "Even" section, "Odd" section, "Monday, Tuesday, ..., Friday" sections, and then sections for Days 1-31. So new stuff gets covered daily, pretty familiar stuff gets every other day, familiar stuff is done once a week, and things that they know Completely continues to get practiced once a month. Why didn't I think of this? So now we can learn and retain more stuff, in less time! So clever.
In other news, our Hamlet memorization is going pretty well. Travis's longest speech for this Friday's practice is this:
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
That it should come to this!
But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king; that was so loving to my mother
and yet, within a month --
Let me not think on't -- Frailty, thy name is woman! ---
why she, even she --
Would have mourn'd longer -- married with my uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules: But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue.
All is not well. I doubt some foul play."
Like I said, it is an adaptation, and if I knew whose it was I would give credit. Travis thought he had an awful lot to say, but tonight we started watching a wonderful, four hour Hamlet and he now feels properly grateful for his extremely abbreviated lines. He even can deliver them with passion once we've been practicing for a little while and I've been explaining exactly Which words should get emphasis and so on (because I have had so much acting experience myself, don't you know!) and he gets sufficiently frustrated with my great helpfulness. Hamlet was frustrated (even annoyed) with his mother, so I figure I'm just helping him get into the role.
Speaking of the Hamlet we are watching, and having just listened to the last two books on tape, we were thrilled to see Filch and Peter Pettigrew (from the HP movies) as the chief of the actors and Rosencrantz (or maybe Guildenstern, who can tell the difference). And Filch was so un-Filchlike! I should note that there were a couple scenes where we covered the children's eyes, but mostly it has been marvelous so far (though we've only seen one hour out of three).
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