YMB #113 Memory Work Fun Games How to Review: A Conversation with Abby Wahl

Hi there, and welcome to episode 113 of the Your Morning Basket podcast. I’m Pam Barnhill, your host, and I’m so happy that you’re joining me here today. Well, we have talked a number of times about memory work on the Your Morning Basket
You’ve probably heard us talk about it before. If not, if you’re new to the podcast, we invite you to go back and search out some of those old memory work podcasts, because they are so much fun. Well, we’re doing it again today, we’re talking all about how we can make memory work just a little bit fun. This is something we’ve touched on a little bit before, but today we have a number of ideas for you on how to review memory work and make it something that your kids actually enjoy. So I’m joined today by Abby Wah, one of my fellow Schole sisters from the Schole Sisters podcast, and neither one of us really consider ourselves fun moms, but we’re talking about ways that we can bring just a little bit of delight to our practice of memory work.

And speaking of memory work, if you have ever wondered, what should we memorize and what kind of art should we look at, music should we listen to? And what kind of things can I put in a Morning Basket? We have you covered. You can download our free sample set of Morning Time plans. They are at Pambarnhill.com/month. And with the download, we’ll send you a PDF download, but we’ll also send you instructions on how you can access those Morning Time plans online and through our new app. So right now you can get Morning Time lesson plans, right on your phone without having to juggle our fool with PDFs, if you don’t want to. And so in there, we’ve made all the hard decisions for you and selected some wonderful things for you and your kids to practice when it comes to memory, work, music, appreciation, art stories, and more. So go download those pambarnhill.com/month. And now on with the podcast.
Abby Wahl is a homeschooling mother of five who range in age from 12 to 17. She’s been married to her husband, Matt for 18 years when she’s not homeschooling her children in the classical in Charlotte Mason philosophy, Abby is busy raising and herding sheep. You may have heard her co-hosting the Schole sisters podcast with me and she also manages the Schole Sister’s private online community called the Sistership where homeschooling moms can think, discuss, and share ideas related to homeschooling and self-education. Abby, welcome back to the Podcast.
Thank you. I’m so happy to be here.
I am always happy to have you here so much fun to have you on.
So let’s remind people a little bit about who you are in your homeschool.
Sure. So I have four boys and one girl, and I’m going to be graduating one this year. So my workload has decreased and increased because everybody gets older and needs more. So I have twin 12-year-olds. And if anyone tells you that it’s two for the price of one, that is just not true. They are double the pleasure and double the fun, but they are not cheap. And I have a 13, almost 14-year-old boy. And then my one daughter is going to be 16 next month. So she is so excited to be driving. And like I said, my oldest is about ready to graduate.
Oh, that’s awesome. And it feels like they should not be that old.
I know it’s crazy. And it comes so fast and I know that’s what everyone hears, but it does blink of an eye. It’s so fast, So fast.
Well, let’s talk a little bit about memory work. Is this something that you guys have always done in your homeschool?
Yeah. You know, that’s the thing I think we try and make memory work, this big thing, but you know, it starts from when they’re little babies. We start singing them songs. We take them to church, they hear hymns, they start hearing scripture being read. Like we have, we do nursery rhymes. I don’t know about your kids, but I mean, we went through mother goose over and over and over again. And I mean, I even have some board books memorized. Goodnight Moon. Right. And where the wild things are. I mean, that is memory and that’s memory work. It’s just this slow trickle over and over. And it starts from when they are babies. Right?
Okay. Hold on a second. Now I did not hear you say anything about memorizing the list of all the pharaohs of Egypt or all of the Kings of England or dates of wars.
Oh, well, if that’s what we’re counting is memory work, then I’m a, I’m a homeschool failure, but I’m okay with that.
Okay. So that’s not the kind of memory work we’re talking about, right?
I mean, those are, those are really interesting things. And I think that there are places or memorizing important dates and memorizing, you know, genealogies and those things. But the memory that I love and the memory work that I think about is, well, last year I read a book called the art of memory, and one of the best, best quotes I ran across in this gigantic tome, which I did not finish, but it was a piece by Cicero. And he talks about that “Memory is a firm perception in the soul of both things and words.” And I think that that is just such a beautiful thought about memory. It’s these things that are inner souls that we have forever. Right?
We listened to our mom’s singing to us lullabies. We listened to our moms reading us stories. We listened to our moms, teaching us nursery rhymes. One, two buckle my shoe, right? These are the things that are those from perceptions in the soul.
Yeah. And you know, we’re not going to lie to you here, Abby and I did a whole workshop along with the other Schole Sisters last year, it is available in the Schole Sister shop. And I do highly recommend it. If memory work is something that you are really wondering about because it’s a great apologetic for why do memory work in your homeschool? And I think Abby has hit upon something here so much is like the things that we memorize really, really can and do speak to and shape who we are as people in our, in our souls and, and everything about us, our virtue. So many of the things about us. So do check that out and I’ll mention it again before we’re done, just to remind you to go check that out because I want to spend most of our time today, not talking so much about why we should memorize, but some of the fun ways to do it.
So when you do memory work now, so you mentioned that when your kids were little, you did a lot of nursery rhymes and singing songs and things of that nature. So now that you, your kids are all over 12, I have a feeling that you’re not going through a whole lot of Mother Goose at this point.
No, No, no.
So how are you working memory work into your day? How much memory work does your family kind of go through on a daily basis? Well, depending on the day, some days we have busier days, so it’s shorter, but we have our Morning Basket our Morning Time that we spend time on reading the Bible, singing a hymn, and then we always go over some of our memory work.
Now we have a big binder full with plastic-covered sheets, with everything from poetry and Shakespeare, to states and capitals, to continents, to presidents. And the last few years we have been working through the citizenship test, which people who want to become naturalized citizens. They have to take this test and they have to answer these things correctly. And that has been just a fabulous way to learn about our government and our own representatives and congressmen in our own state.
We have to look some things up. So we are everything from poetry and music to civics and certain dates. But yeah, those are all types of things that we have in our Morning Time binder.
Okay. That is so cool because it was not too long ago that my daughter asked me about the citizenship test and about the process for naturalization for citizens.
And I just kind of in an offhanded way said, you know, they do have to take a test. They have to have all of this knowledge and I kind of alluded to the fact that there are probably a lot of us that myself included probably who couldn’t answer all of the questions on that test. And she said, we should add this to our Morning Time. And I had totally forgotten about it. So I’m making myself a note, right now.
There’s a hundred questions and it covers all branches of the government. And it’s just a great broad overview. And, and then it has some specific things that, you know, we looked up for our own personal state, but it has been a really great thing for us to just know these things and to have quick answers.
It’s a lot like catechism. And we also memorize catechism in our Morning Time as well. I think that that is so important for kids to be able to answer questions of faith and have it just pop into their mind. Right. We’re, we’re called to have a ready answer.
Yeah. To have that, that quick answer. So really quickly, I just want to say ours looks very similar to Abby’s in that we have a binder, we have the page protectors in there. We have the body of work that’s in there. The vast majority of ours, ours is pulled from scripture, Shakespeare and Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization, which is an IEW poetry, memorization product that I use. And then also selections that come from the Your Morning Basket plus membership. And I’ve kind of got it all, just put in there together. And right now we are actually memorizing this civil air patrol cadet oath because I have two who are doing civil air patrol. And so we spend just a few minutes every day working on our newest selection and then going back and reviewing, you know, anywhere from one to three previous selections in our kind of review pile. So that’s how we do it.
Yeah. There’s some days where I do more review just because my children actually really delight in going back over the things that they learned years ago. One of the things we do, IEWs the Poetry and Linguistic Development too. And I actually bought the CDs. And so I have one of those in my car and when we have a longer trip, I just pop it in and we, I still have a CD player in my car. I know it’s bad, But it’s great because we can just listen to it. And then we move on. And sometimes, you know, my kids are fighting over what to listen to. And so this just ends it. And sometimes they’ll be like, oh, I don’t want to do this. But always at the end of it, they’re mouthing along or making funny faces to it. And it works. The other one I loved when my kids were younger, was Susan Wise Bauer’s First Language Lessons.
Yeah. And it has some great poetry. And you know, like the Caterpillar by Christina G Rosseti, I mean, my kids know all of these things. So even though they might be a little bit quote, unquote, babyish, they still say it loud and proud like we practiced and that, so we still review things often.
I love it. I love it. Okay. So I want to bring something up. You mentioned like states and capitals and the citizenship test and things like that. Now, how do you bring context to watch you’re memorizing? So you’re just not doing the whole drill and kill the out-of-context thing.
Yeah. Well, sometimes it’s things that my children actually bring to me. Like we are doing a grammar program and we love Madlibs, but everyone was having a hard time remembering, you know, what an adverb was and all of these things.
So they have asked me to bring that into Morning Time so that we can start memorizing those things. So that way, when it comes up in our grammar text and in Madlibs they have it, the things like states and capitals, when we started doing our citizenship test, we had guesses of how many states there were it’s kind of one of those things that you don’t know until you don’t know. And I said, well, there’s 50 states and each of them have a Capitol and they kind of were on board with, well, we should memorize some of those. And we have people in those, we have friends and things like that in different states. And so it’s always fun to do map work.
And that’s just one of the ways. So we do map work in our geography lessons. So states and capitals were just one of those things that just naturally seem to fit.
Okay. So these are like a lot of interests that your kids are having and bringing to you and want and wanting to learn for themselves. And that yeah, that helps provide some of the context there for what you’re doing.
Okay. So let’s talk about how to do memory work in a way that is not boring. And, and I’m going to caveat this conversation as we begin this conversation and start talking about some of the ideas that Abby and I are going to give you, it’s been a long time since done anything other than just recite. It’s probably been a good two or three years since my, like, my kids are just happy to just be lumps on the couch in the morning and say the memory work. When they were little, it was different. And I’m going to share all of my best ideas for when they were little. But I do just want to clear the air that there’s nothing wrong with just repeating the memory work.
Right? Yeah. I agree. I totally believe that. I think it’s Brandy Vencel, who’s on the Schole Sisters podcast with us, but she always talks about exposure breeds taste, and sometimes your kids are not necessarily enthusiastic about memorizing something new. I know that that’s one of the things that my kids do is like when it’s new, it’s a little bit foreign.
And so there’s always a little bit of pushback when you get 11 and 12-year-old kids, you’re going to just get there are hard days. It’s, there’s going to be pushback and a lot of why do I have to do this? So persevere, mamas, and it gets easier every time you go over it.
Yeah, it really, really does. I do think it’s easy. Like when I started with my kids, we definitely started young and not only did we start young with the things that were very organic within our day, but we also started young being deliberate about it. And so now it’s something they do. Now. I do get questions very recently. I got the question, “why do we do memory work, mom?” And I told them about the sophisticated language patterns and all of that. And they were like, wow, it’s like, you’ve answered that question before. And I said, yeah, I have. And I told them, Andrew Pudewa’s quote about not being able to get anything out of a mind that has nothing in it to begin with.
And they seemed very satisfied with that answer, you know, but I do think there is that kind of tough age of that 11 and 12-year-old, where it is a little bit of, of why do I have to do this?
Yeah, go ahead. Everything is pointless to them at this age. So keep your answers short to them.
Just, this is just cause we’re going to keep doing it. So yes, I like that answer because, because we’re going to keep doing it. Okay. So what are some things that you’ve done in the past to make memory work just a little more interesting and fun?
Well, my kids probably, if they would’ve gone to public school probably would’ve been on a plan to maybe medicate them. They are very active and energetic. And so sitting still is actually one of those things that is not physically possible for them to do so once in a while, or we have balanced boards and foam rollers, and I will often have them actually stand and balance on those as we are doing our memory work.
And that actually is great for their strength. And it gives them a little bit of a challenge if we are going too slow and saying our memory verses in a pathetic voice, which sometimes does happen. We smile again, we stand up, we put our hands on our hips and we smile when we do it. I love it. Because sometimes just our posture needs to change and it changes our attitudes.
One of the things that we, when we were learning the months of the year, which sometimes it’s really hard for kids to sequence that because it’s actually a list of 12 things and it doesn’t always make sense. So when we were learning that we learned a couple of poems about the days of how many days in each month, right. 30 days has September and which does not, you know, that that poem doesn’t follow the list of, you know, No, it does not. So they, we ask questions about that. And it was just one of those things that we went through and looked at a calendar, right. There’s just some things to make it right. Like we were saying contextualized and things like that.
Fun is sometimes saying it really, really fast. And sometimes it’s saying it in a funny voice, we have done this, the, one of the other fun things that we have done, which I quote, I’ll put air quotes on this, but we were learning Psalm 118 and it’s a longer Psalm. So I gave everyone like six or seven verses to memorize. And then we would go around and say our parts.
And then I would challenge them and say, okay, now who can say someone else’s part because when we had gone over it so many times, and each person had gone over their parts, naturally they picked up the other parts. And so when we were able to switch it up and they were able to do that, that was kind of a fun thing for them to like, see, I knew that to mom. And sometimes I just will just throw down the challenge like, well, can you say this one without my help? I don’t know. I don’t think you can. And they’re like, well, let me just show you then. And so I have a lot of boy energy and competitive stuff, so this has been helpful for us.
Okay. So, so many great points to unpack here. First of all, we had a mini-trampoline in our school room for the longest time. So you were talking about the foam rollers and the balance boards. Like if I had somebody who needed it, I would totally stick them over there and let them get on the mini trampoline.
And I think it’s important to note that when we talk about doing memory work as part of a larger Morning Time, one of the things that we always say about doing a Morning Basket with your kids is there’s never the expectation that they should be sitting there on their hands or with their hands neatly folded in their lap, not moving at all.
You know, there’s, there’s typically a lot of movement and kids are doing things. I mean, my kids always have been. Do your kids like do things with their hands and Morning Time?
Yeah. The only time that I don’t like we do have a few, like, we can’t bring toys because that was just chaotic, but we can always draw and we can have, sometimes we would have like little polymer clay, and they would work on things. And when they were younger, they did have small toys. Like when they weren’t quite old enough to fully participate. But one of the things is the only time I’m like really ever strict about this is when we are reading God’s word and when we were singing a hymn. Right. But that is out of a personal preference of reverence. And I think that it needed to be treated seriously, but otherwise, you know, if people are sitting upside down on the couch and they are not disturbing their siblings sitting next to them, then you have to pick those battles. So
Yeah. Yeah. And it took a, it took a few years, but my kids know like prayer time, like this, like this is when you’re not eating, you don’t have your mouth full. You, you know, you’re being quiet, not interjecting every little thought, you know, not doing other things with your hands. So it’s really good now because they’ve got to the age where they’re like, well, I’m going to like, go get this or I’m going to do this, but it’ll be after prayer. So it’s gotten good.
Okay. So funny voices is also a tool that we have used through the years. And I actually have, I’ll stick them in the show notes for this episode of the podcast. I actually have some funny voice cards that you can download. And so we would play a game with these cards. So there it’s like recite it in an opera voice, recite it like a cowboy, recite it in a volcano voice, which is like, where you start really, really low and you get a lot loud I’m not going to get too loud, but you get a lot louder. Recite it like a robot. Did I say opera singer? That was so popular, recite it like the queen of England. And so, you know, I would put all of these cards in a little stack and the kids would pull one of them out and then, you know, we would, we would all have to recite it like that. And so that was something they absolutely love. That was a fun way to practice memory work when they were younger.
One thing my kids have requested is my oldest likes to write poetry. And sometimes it’s very, very funny. And so they actually get asked that asked for that to be included in their recitation. So they are memorizing some of their brothers funny poetry that he has written over the years.
Oh, I love it. That is so, so cool. Okay. So have you ever played games with any of your memory work?
Yeah, we’ve done some things like that. Like I said, the competition one is good. We’ve also done where I point to a kid and they say the next line. And that seems to be kind of the games where I’ve also used a dice to throw out their number and they have to say the memory work and that’s just kind of a fun way to bring it in.
And I include myself in this. Since there’s, you know, my five students and myself, then we will take turns saying whatever we’re working on. So
Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And we used to, do we have a runner in our school room? You know, one of those long narrow rugs. That like usually in a hallway or something like that. So we had one in our school room and I would get a laundry basket and put it at one end of the runner. And then you would have to stand at the other end of the runner. And if you could say the piece of memory work correctly, then you actually got to throw the, to throw the socks, toward the basket. And if you got it in, then you got a point. So that’s great. You know, unfortunately for some of my kids, like basketball was never their strong suit. So they would like nail the memory work and totallymissed getting the socks in the basket. So that was, that was one of the things that we did.
And then we played another game that was a variation of hot and cold, which was a lot of fun. So we would take like a small stuffed animal or something and one kid would leave the room and while they were out of the room, we would hide it. And then when they came back, we would just recite the memory work over and over.
If they got close to where the stuffed animal was hidden, we would recite louder. And if they got further away, we would recite softer. And so yeah, they love doing that. And what was really cool about it was sometimes you would have to say something over and over and over again, five to 10 times before the person actually found the, whatever it was they were looking for. So you got a lot of practice in, okay.
So we’ve talked about some really fun ideas here for how to review memory work as a family. What if you’re the kind of person and you don’t consider yourself to be a particularly fun mom?
That’s okay. I don’t categorize myself as a fun mom, but I do have a goal of being a fun mom for 10 minutes a day because I think it was Sarah Mackenzie who said this years and years and years ago. But she said that if you were a fun mom for 10 minutes, and I think it was even less than a day, I think it was a week. It wasn’t very much that your kids will look back and actually remember you being a fun mom.
So, a 10 minute a day on mom can be a totally manageable and doable. That’s a doable goal. I’m a firstborn and I tend to be very goal-oriented. And so I’m ready to, and I’m a morning person. And right now I have a house full of teenagers who are allergic to mornings.
So, you know, I have to wait on my fun mom time until later in the afternoon, but this can be playing a game. So our family’s favorite game or my favorite game is cribbage. And actually, it’s a great game. If you want to teach your children to add up to 31 is kind of the goal. So if you’ve never played cribbage, please find someone who knows how to play because you either don’t know about cribbage or you love it. There, there is no other option.
I love that. I love it. Okay. So I really liked this idea of, and you know, I’ve told this to people before, too, like being a fun mom doesn’t necessarily always mean you have to be a spontaneous mom. You could actually take some of the ideas that we’ve mentioned today and talked about today and write them down or take some other, you know, some other ideas that you might find somewhere else for reciting and reviewing memory work and, you know, kind of have your fun mom list and say, Hey, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we have more time in Morning Time.
I’m going to actually do something from the fun mom list. Your kids have no idea that you’re not being spontaneous.
That’s right.
Yeah. So I think I’m with Abby, I liked that idea of just doing 10 minutes a day and letting it go from there. Do your kids ever review memory work without you?
I mean, that’s the thing they, they do. And they don’t even realize it. Sometimes somebody will say something and they say a poem that we’ve memorized when Christmas time comes around, actually singing Christmas songs and carols right there reviewing that music and things like that. We have also, like I said, my, one of my kids really wanted to know the parts of speech. And so he asked me to personally print off a list with some definitions and an example.
And he has it posted in his bed where he can, when he wakes up in the morning, he says, he just wants to look at it, first thing, so that he really understands and gets this and starts memorizing it. So, yeah, I mean, my kids mostly it’s been this thing that is self-interested in things like that.
So they’ve, they’ve asked, but one of my older kids, when he was studying and needed to learn memorize some Latin declensions, he went to Quizlet and made himself cards. And that was a basically it’s just flashcards, but he didn’t have to write them out by hand. And he was able to memorize a bunch of declensions. And that’s not necessarily the memory work that we’re talking about here, but you know, motivated kids will memorize things when they are motivated to do it.
Yeah. Yeah. When they find a need to, and those are all really great tips for different ways that they can do that without you, you know, you’re not having to drive that train. They’re actually taking ownership of that and doing some of that on their own.
So well, these were some fabulous ideas, Abby, and I do want to encourage everybody, just a couple of resources for you. We’ll have a link to the Linguistic Development through Poetry, memorization for you, as well as the fun, funny voices cards that you can download. And then also do go check out the homeschool essentials memory that was the 2021 Schole Sisters retreat.
You can get that. Now you can watch it by yourself. We have a hostess kit where you can set up and watch it with some friends. If you want to kind of do your own little all-day workshop on memory work. If you’re more interested in, in taking it just a little bit further, it’s a great apologetic. It’s why should we memorize? And why is it important? And what does it mean for education for us to do that? And then we also have some other tactics in there, just a lot more ideas of what to memorize. I can remember Abby giving us a good long list of different things that we could potentially memorize and then as well as some other techniques, including one that I’m very fond of, teaching you how to do a memory palace.
So, yeah. Abby, thank you so much for coming and chatting with me today. All about how we can make memory work a little fun, even if we’re not fun moms ourselves.
That’s a good thing.
And there you have it. Now, if you would like links to any of the resources that Abby and I chatted about today, including those funny voices cards and the Schole sisters Memory Retreat, you can find those on the show notes for this episode of the podcast. That’s at Pambarnhill.com/113. Now I will be back again in a couple of weeks. Next time we’re going to be talking all about perfectionism and how it can ruin your Morning Time and can really stop you from doing what you want to do with Morning Time, which is bringing a little bit of delight to your homeschool day. So join me again in a couple of weeks to talk all about that until then keep seeking truth, goodness, and beauty in your homeschool day.