Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Homegrown Genius (I saw that on a bumper sticker once and I love it!)

                  Jake is a Memory Master.
On April 26th our Classical Conversations co-op had an awards ceremony to acknowledge all the hard work that the children had put in over the last 24 weeks we meet and worked together. Jake got two awards.  One for having participated in the Essentials program.  Jake learned more in his 24 weeks in Essentials about grammar than I learned in all my school years.  It is amazing and he put in a lot of hard work.  He also became a Cycle 1 Memory Master in FoundationsThis means that he memorized ALL the information from all 24 weeks.  It is a ton of information!!! 

            It's over 400 pieces of information.
             -161 event and people in a chronological timeline.
                                 -The 44 US Presidents   
            -24 history sentences to add depth to our timeline. (This is an example of just one of the 24 history sentences he memorized: "The British North American Act established the Dominion of Canada. The Canadians gained total independence from Britain in 1982. French is spoken in the province of Quebec."  That is one weeks memory work and it isn't even the longest one...He memorized 24 sentences paragraphs like that!)
-120 locations and geographic features in Africa, Europe, and the Old World.
-25 Science facts (including classifications of living things and each continents highest mountain)
-5 Latin noun endings and their singular and plural declensions.
-English grammar facts-including 53 prepositions, 23 helping verbs, and 12 linking verbs.
-In math we refreshed our memorization of the multiplication tables up to 15x15, common squares and cubes and basic geometry.
He did all this, while also working through Saxon Math 7/6 (math for average 7th graders & advanced 6th graders), reading & studying Vol. 1 of the Story of the World, reading a ton of  other books and a ton of other things I can't think of at the moment, because Jake has 2 buddies from our co-op over today that moved into our neighborhood over the weekend and Jake is rushing me to finish so I can take them to the church to ride bikes...even though they have been riding all over already!  Jake is in heaven having friends right up the street!  It has been several years since he has had that!
He even got this cool t-shrit to show he is a Memory Master.
It's my new favorite shirt for him to wear.
We are just the tiniest bit proud of him. :)