Mimi Rothschild, Home School Advocate – The Homeschooling News Café

-by Mimi Rothschild

Is it better to memorize information, or to have lots of hands-on learning so the information is fully understood?

The answer is a definite “It depends.”

Human brains were designed by God to understand fully. We’re not as good at memorizing things as we are at learning them – that is, at getting complete understanding so that it stays in our minds in our own words. Memorizing things is a harder task for the human brain than learning things.

We have more control over information we’ve learned through full understanding than we do over information we’ve learned by rote. You can prove this to yourself – quick! What’s the eighteenth letter of the alphabet? You probably had to start at A and count your way through till you got to the eighteenth letter. That’s because you memorized the alphabet by rote. You don’t have this problem with information you’ve learned thoroughly, be it the geography of your state or the systems of the human body.

We’re also more likely to “forget” things we’ve memorized – that is, to be unable to call them to mind – when we’re stressed. For example, during a test or a really difficult task, it can be hard to bring memorized facts to mind.

So most of the time we’re better off learning fully than learning by rote.

However, there are times when memorization is a better tool.

First, there are things we need to learn that can’t be understood fully because they are arbitrary. That is, there isn’t any good reason for November to have 30 days and December to have 31. It’s just the way it is. We want our children to know the number of days in each month, so they’ll just have to memorize it. That’s true for the alphabet, too.

There are also things we want to have command of quickly. The multiplication tables, for example, are not arbitrary. We could calculate the product of two numbers every time we needed to know that information if we wanted to. But it’s faster to memorize the multiplication tables once than it is to calculate them over and over.

Finally, there are things we want to be able to remember exactly, not in our own words. Scripture, for example, is worth memorizing. When we memorize the Word of God, we can call on it during times of worry, fear, or temptation. In fact, God commanded us to memorize his words: “…these words, which I command thee this day, shall be upon thy heart; and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up” (Deuteronomy 6:6-7).

Deuteronomy gives us a great starting point for how we can memorize information, or teach things to our children by rote: repetition. While kids often remember things they’ve learned fully from one hands-on lesson, they rarely can memorize a Bible verse or a set of math facts in one try. Usually, you need to set aside fifteen minutes or so every day for drill until the lesson is memorized.

What’s the best method for memorizing information? The simple answer is this: whatever your students will do, and pay attention to, for those fifteen minutes a day. Flashcards, drills, games like Concentration, singing songs with the information or the Bible verse in them – all of these approaches will work, if your students can pay attention.

The “pay attention” part is essential, though. A famous experiment found that people who used a telephone dozens of times each day couldn’t accurately draw the dial of the telephone with the numbers in the right places. Your students may not be old enough to have seen a telephone dial, but they probably can’t accurately draw the keypad of a modern phone, either. Neither can you, most likely. After all, you don’t have the intention of memorizing the placement of those numbers and letters when you look at it.

So, when your students need to memorize information, be sure they approach it with the intention of learning it by heart. Then build time for concentrated practice into the day every day until it’s completely learned.

**********************************************************
Mimi Rothschild is the Founder of LearningByGrace.org the nation’s leading provider of online PreK-12 online Christian educational programs for homeschoolers.

-by Mimi Rothschild

When you go to cut your Christmas tree, send the kids around to gather up a good sack of pine cones as well. Use them for some fun, hands-on lessons.

Make a pine cone bird feeder.  This is a satisfyingly messy project. Before you begin, do some research with your students to determine what kind of foods your local birds will most enjoy.

•    Tie strings around the stem ends of your pine cones. Put peanut butter into a pie tin or plate, and use hands or safe knives to spread it all over the pine cones. Hang the cones in a safe place.

•    Into another dish, pour bird seed, oatmeal, corn meal, dried fruits, and any other foods your research suggests your feathered friends would enjoy. For a very special artistic element to the project, put these items into different dishes and line them up on a table where your young artists can reach them.

•    Now take the peanut butter-covered pine cones and roll them in the birdseed and other bird foods. With care, you can create patterns of different colors and textures.

•    Hang the pine cone bird feeders on the trees outside, preferably where you can see them from an inside window. Take pictures of the birds that come to visit and learn their names, or count and graph them for a math lesson.

Make fire fancies. Have a chemistry lesson in and make a great holiday gift at the same time. The basic idea is to soak pine cones in water into which you have mixed some salt. Point out that mixing salt into water creates a solution. Put the pine cones in first thing in the morning and take them out at the end of the day. Set them to dry overnight, and you’re finished. A basket of these makes a sweet Christmas present. The fun comes when you put these pine cones into a fire — each type of salt will produce different colored flames. Here are some salts to try out:

•    sodium chloride (table salt)
•    sodium borate (borax)
•    magnesium sulphate (Epsom salts)
•    potassium chloride (salt substitute)

Make pine cone firestarters.
•    Put a block of paraffin (from the grocery or craft store) into a clean coffee can. Put the coffee can into a big pot of water.
•    Stir in old broken crayons for color.
•     Dip the pine cones into the wax. Tie a string around each cone to hold it while dipping. You will find that you need to dip each cone several times to get a good thick coat of wax.
•    You can also mix the salts listed above with sawdust and dredge the newly-waxed pine cones in the mixture, for firestarters that also make colors.
•    Hang the firestarters overnight to dry.

As you dip the pine cones, you can discuss forms of matter, since you melting a solid into a liquid and allowing it to solidify again, and then burning it to create a gas. This is also a good time to talk about fire safety.