How well do your kids retain history?

[ThelmaLou]

If you look back over your course of study, how well do they remember various personalities, wars, periods, movements, etc? I must admit, my 2 oldest don't seem to remember much. For example, they remember that Alexander the Great was the guy with the horse who cut a knot in half. But when did he live? Where did he live? For what was he primarily known? I get the deer in the headlights look. I'm discouraged about their retention.

I've used VP all the way through, and I'm pretty relaxed about history. In WTM, SWB says that your aim in history should be to create the mental pegs on which to hang later information. I'm not sure I've done this successfully. Or if I have, those pegs are fewer and farther between than I'd like them to be. And if you hang anything on them that's too heavy, they'll crack.

My kids started out doing the VP worksheets, but it was torturous. I abandoned them because it seemed to be simple regurgitation of what was on the cards. Since then, we simply take 1 card a week, read it, and then read a handful of books to go with it. No testing of any sort. Just reading. What am I doing wrong?

[Chris in VA]

Not using SOTW? LOL
Just kidding--I was reading the SOTW thread just now...

I'm not sure how old your dc are, but I really wouldn't worry about the retention if they are in the first go-round. I don't think you are doing anything wrong, but maybe you aren't doing enough?
If you want to add to their retention, you can do memory work with the history sentences on the VP cards, ala
Classical Conversations. You can do more hands-on projects. You can make notebook pages as Susan recommends, using narration. You can memorize quotes from the people you study. You can do copywork. You can do a timeline. Are you doing any of these? I would find it pretty difficult myself to retain info on just reading alone.

[MySerenity]

I guess it depends on how old your kids are. My oldest remembers the the major personalities of the Ancients we've been studying. He can tell you the basic story of Troy. He can tell you myths from all the cultures we've read about. And so on and so on. And he gets excited every time he hears anything on television about Greece, Egypt or Mesopotamia. He however couldn't tell me the dates of anything as we really haven't studied actual dates yet. And he is only in first grade so it's the first time he's encountering any of this. I'm guessing he'll be able to tell me dates and times and the such when the Logic stage comes around.

[TracyR]

As you can see in my signature below how old my daughters are . My oldest has a VERY good memory and can tell you the story of Troy , she remembers the stories from the 3rd grade Gods of Greece from Calvert , can remember things about the Egyptians , Greeks , Romans . But she too doesnot remember dates yet . That may come later .
History is her favorite subject though . Then there is my 2nd daughter who just remembers none of it .

[8FillTheHeart]

until they hit the late logic and rhetorical stages, mine remember very little. Totally normal and I don't think twice about it.

History in the younger yrs is to create vague memories that leap forward like old friends when they re-encounter them when they read about them again when they are older.

[Susie in CA]

We are finishing off 3rd grade this year. My older son seems to have forgotten a lot about 1st and 2nd grade History. That's okay! In less then 2 years he'll start again. My guess is the pegs are still there and when we get around to it they will pop up fairly quickly -- not the dates, but the names, places and events.

SWB recommends all those maps, coloring pages, narration, projects to help them remember. At first I didn't really get the why! Now I do. The kids remember the things we worked on the most, hardest, longest, and/or were the most fun.

I guess, I just reminded myself to get back to do more doing and writing myself. :D

You know, I find myself going away from the WTM from time to time for various reasons. I always end up going back to TWTM way because the kids learn and retain way more then with anything else we have tried.

Susie

[Beth in Central TX]

I've had the same experience here. My boys retained some of the stories going through grammar stage history, but now that they are in the logic stage, they are remembering more and making connections as we continue to move through history chronologically.

[dragons in the flower bed]

Since then, we simply take 1 card a week, read it, and then read a handful of books to go with it. No testing of any sort. Just reading. What am I doing wrong?

That my kids remember the major events of history and can visualize the rise and fall of civilizations is important to me. Literacy is my aim, and that just can't be defined to exclude historical events and figures. In your situation, I'd keep trying different things until you hit upon what I works.

I actually had to do this with my partner's son. I discovered that if we just read aloud, he'd never remember anything. I first went to mapwork, then narration, then worksheets, but none of those worked for him. The 10yo would remember generally in context and accurately, the relevance of the Nile, a myth or two which appealed to him, and the story of the Rosetta Stone, but he will forget the uniting of the upper and lower kingdoms, Ahkenaton or even Cleopatra, completely. You know why? Because those were the stories he acted out with his action figures. I realized quite by accident that he really needs to dramatize it, as the Konos folks say.

My 7yo remembers everything, so long as he reads about it once a year or so. As long as he's reading a lot, and from quality children's books, opportunities to remember what he knows about past history topics seem to come up naturally. I don't think this is normal, though. He's got that nerd thing going on where he can spout facts but not relate to people so much.

[OhElizabeth]

If you're doing VP and not actively reviewing the specifics of the cards, even orally, then, like you say, some kids are going to remember things and other kids aren't. My dd remembers as much as she wants to remember, lol. She knows names and dates for things that are totally peculiar, things we've never even studied, because it caught her eye and she wanted to. Does she remember specifics off the VP cards? Only if they are part of the larger story or really caught her attention or if they're things we've kept up with reviewing. And I think, like the others said, the less the kid cares about history, the less he's going to remember. I'm pretty sure I remember NOTHING of history covered by me in school until 6th grade, but I am so NOT a history person. In the VP school, they actively review those cards on a rotating schedule. It's given in the resource section on their website under memory period.

[Jenny in Atl]

My oldest 12, remembers the big picture. She is not a date and specific facts kind of gal. My youngest seven, has one of the steel trap minds. We made a joke at the dinner table Sat, to beware of the Ides of March; she yelled out, "Julius Caesar!"

Just keep immersing them in it, at least that's how I feel.:hat:

[WTMindy]

First of all, I don't like VP for the reasons you mentioned (I hated the workbook pages), but for me the first rotation of history is more about giving kids a love of history than remembering specifics. You are giving pegs (and Alexander the Great cutting a knot *is* a peg). Younger children will remember a good story, but they won't remember cause and effect necessarily.

I found that history projects (from SOTW) gave my kids a love and excitement for history that has carried over in the second rotation. Do they remember things from the first time around? Not as much as I would have hoped, but they have a love and an interest in history that I give credit to SOTW and the activity guide.

I'm glad that they will get it again a third time because I'm sure there is stuff they won't remember again. One other thing that helped is to have the kids give an oral report on something. We have a unit celebration with the cousins (we are doing TOG for the second rotation) and the kids each give a speech on something they learned. They tend to really remember what they give a speech on.

[MIch elle]

so we review VP cards(I chose some, not all)every other day or so.