It’s been a few weeks now, but I still want to brag about Kayla’s amazing accomplishment in her Classical Conversations homeschool program.  She received tulips from her Daddy on the day of her achievement, and recently received the coveted Memory Master t-shirt, which is why I waited to post about it.  Gotta show off the t-shirt!

 Kayla accomplished something called Memory Master in the wonderful classical education program and community we have been a part of for three years now.  (Cooper also won this title 2 years ago!)  In order to become a “Memory Master”, Kayla was responsible for memorizing nearly one thousand pieces of information learned over the course of the 24 week program. And the standard was “word perfect”, which meant not ONE mistake could be made.

 Here is a breakdown of the facts and information she was responsible for:

History: 24 sentences that encapsulate a period or event such as:

“In 1898, Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders defeated the Spanish at the battle of San Juan Hill while trying to help the Cubans win their independence.” 

or this:

“In 1917, President Wilson asked Congress to declare war on the Central Powers two years after German U-Boats sank the Lusitania, killing American citizens.”

and the Bill of Rights

and the Preamble to the Constitution

Timeline Flashcards and Presidents: 160 flashcards depicting events beginning with the Garden of Eden, and ending with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

and

ALL 44 presidents (well, 43 men ~ Cleveland served twice, non-consecutively.)

 Latin: 37 vocabulary words, 3 Latin rules, 13 sections of John 1:1-7 in Latin, and 13 sections of John 1:1-7 in English, such as…

vita = life
lux = light
homo/hominum = man
nomen = name

and

“Latin nouns and pronouns have different endings called declensions.”

and

“In the beginning was the Word…”

and

“In principio erat Verbum…”

Science: 114 facts including 52 list items as in the response to this question:

“What are the four types of tissue?”

Answers:
connective
epithelial
muscle
nerve

and 6 sentences like this:

“The atomic number is the number of protons in the nucleus of an atom, which is also the number of electrons in a neutral atom.”

and 48 facts associated with the first 12 elements of the periodic table like this:

1 Hydrogen (H) 1 (number, element, abbreviation, and rounded mass)
2 Helium (He) 4
3 Lithium (Li) 7
4 Beryllium (Be) 9

Geography: all 50 states, and all 50 capitols (on a blank map with the director pointing to a state or asking the student to find a state!), and 62 geographical features of the United States like:

Chesapeake Bay
Mammoth Cave
Black Hills
Painted Desert
Mohave Desert
Great Lakes
All major rivers
all major trails (Oregon, Mormon, Santa Fe…)
Ozark highlands
Okefenokee Swamp… and many more.

English: 9 sentence definitions for things like “phrase” like this:

“A phrase is a group of words that does not contain both a subject and a verb, and may be used as a single part of speech.” (also predicate, subject, subordinate clause, and independent clause)

and the “principal parts” of 14 irregular verbs such as:

to lie (infinitive)
lay(s) (present)
laid (past)
laying (present participle)
laid (past participle)

and 2 lists: the 4 types of sentence structures and the 7 sentence patterns (S-V-DO-OCN)

and last but DEFINITELY not least…

Math: 236 facts including:

212 multiplication facts from 1×1 through 15×15, the perfect squares through 15^2, and cubes through 15^3

and

24 math laws, formulas, and conversion such as:

“The Distributive Law states: a(b+c) = ab + ac.”  or “The area of a circle is Pi(3.14) times the radius squared.”

In my opinion this is an amazing accomplishment, so I’m bragging on my girl! (There were a total of 8 students who earned the title!)  She did most of this work all by herself, since I wasn’t able to be quite as involved during our time in Texas and all of our travels.  (The kids participated in CC while in Texas, too.  We just transferred campuses for three months!) She studied in cars, coffee shops, and relatives’ houses! And this is not to mention ALL of the art and music history she studied, the tin whistle tunes she learned, the science experiments she completed each week, the weekly public speaking component, and ALL of the English grammar she learned and composition practice she got in the afternoon “Essentials” program.

I couldn’t be more proud of her. I couldn’t be more pleased with the curriculum that Classical Conversations provides for my kiddos.  And I couldn’t be more blessed by this incredibly loving and supportive community of homeschoolers.