Memory Masters!! We Survived! (Videos at the End)

[Disclaimer: MAJOR mommy bragging in this post. If you don't want to read on and on about how awesome Shiloh is, skip this post. Just sayin'!]

First of all, she volunteered to do this. Let me say that again -- Shiloh asked to do Memory Masters. Now, about halfway through, she totally regretted her decision, but we have a whole thing about finishing what we start, so we saw it through. And....

...she did it! We were all so relieved! We had gone over the material again and again, so I was confident that Shiloh knew it. I was just concerned, however, that after all this, she would panic and blank out being in front of the tutor and director. I know I would! The entire test was mostly verbal, with a few exceptions during the math portion that she voluntarily wrote on a white board and, of course, the Geography section. Here are facts that we memorized during Cycle 2:

• 160 events and people in a Timeline from Creation to the Present
• 44 U.S. Presidents
• 122 Geographical locations -- these included countries, features such as mountains and rivers, bodies of water, and cities. This was on a black-line map, too! It was difficult!
• 24 Science questions on a variety of areas in a Q and A format
• 24 History sentences on the following:
• Charlemagne
• William the Conqueror
• The Crusades
• The Magna Carta
• The Hundred Years' War
• The Renaissance
• The Protestant Reformation
• European Exploration
• Age of Absolute Monarchs
• History of Russia
• The French Revolution
• The Battle of Waterloo
• The Industrial Revolution
• World Leaders and Countries of World War I
• Leaders and Beginning of World War II
• Formation of the United Nations
• Korean War
• Vietnam War
• Cold War
• Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe
• Gulf War
• Apartheid in South Africa
• 6 Latin Conjugations
• Algebraic Laws, Skip Counting to 15x15, Squares, Cubes, Unit Conversions and Equivalents
• Definitions for pronoun, verb, adverb, adjective, gerund, appositive, conjunction and interjection; various types of nouns, coordinating conjunctions, and more!

For real, that's over 500 -- FIVE HUNDRED -- pieces of information!! 

A good bit of these were taught in song. You can learn anything if you put it to a song. :o)

And  I want to add that throughout the year, we actually worked on all of these, meaning that we did experiments relating to Newton's Laws of Motion (and the others), worked out all of the mathematical laws, used the Grammar definitions to identify them, etc. These are all things she actually knows. If only my entire high school education had been so thorough!

The Timeline and Math Facts won't change from year to year, but everything else will. Classical Conversations has three cycles in the Foundations program (K4 to 3rd grade), and then in 4th grade, the same cycles continue except they add an "Essentials" program to it with more in-depth information. 

In order to achieve Memory Master, she had to recite all Memory Work, in one sitting. Four times. Once for me, once for a person not in our immediate family (our friend Cheryl graciously donated two hours of her time to do this -- thank you!!), once for a tutor on a local campus, and THEN if she passed with all of those, she went through a random sampling with the director of the campus. 

And she did it! Yay!!

If you can't tell, I love Classical Conversations for our homeschool and am so excited about it that I've signed up to be a tutor in a classroom next year at a nearby campus. Is it nerdy that I'm super excited about the upcoming summer training? Because I am!

To help Shiloh study, we recorded her reciting all of the Memory Work so she could play it back. She especially liked that part. :o) So, I wanted to share them with you guys. 

There are several, and some of them are quite hilarious b/c she breaks up the monotony of recitation with her own personal "spin." :o) The Timeline Songs can be especially funny with her hand movements and such. I won't be offended if you don't watch them all, because I'm super impressed regardless!

(You might catch me making her sit still to stay in the frame but also b/c I wasn't sure if the tutor would allow her to move around. Thankfully, she did. She said Shiloh set most of her Memory Work to ballet moves. Good tutor.)

Being Shiloh, she recorded an Intro (last, naturally, but I included it first, you're welcome).

First up is the Timeline Song. For each person or event learned, there was a timeline card that went along with it that explained the person or event in detail and why it was significant. We read one or two each weekday at lunchtime. There are some timeline cards that she asks to read again. I. LOVE. THAT. Anyhoo, here's the song. :o) Also, she had no idea I was recording her the first few subjects b/c I didn't want to distract her.

Presidents:

Math, broken into two parts because she felt the need to jump while singing halfway through. :o)

English Grammar:

Geography, broken into two parts b/c my feet hurt and I had to move. :o)

Science. She was mad during this one b/c she was fidgeting with an apple and I had to restart the video four separate times. I made her put it away so she could focus and she was mad the whole time. It happens. :o/

Latin:

Wow. Forreal, that was a lot of work. After talking with some of the other moms during testing, they said that the first year was always the hardest, but it was so much easier after that. It was stressful, but we made it. And she's going to get a Tshirt. 

Worth it. :o)