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retention with SCM Visit to…
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We did Visits to South & Central America and Australia this year with a 6th grader, 3rd grader, and 1st grader. They liked it, but the 1st and 3rd grader don’t remember a single thing about it (couldn’t even name one country or continent studied, let alone locate it a map) and my 6th grader only remembered the location of Australia. They are all dyslexic so memorizing things is not a strong point for any of them. I’m not sure if there’s a point to doing the mapping exercises if they’re not remembering any of it, but I’m not sure what else to do for geography. Maybe I should just read living books and point out the places on a map? Maybe I should have had them do the South/Central America Geopuzzle more. Has anyone else had trouble with their kids not retaining anything after doing a Visits to…?
My kids retained very little with Visits to…. also. I’m not sure if it’s age or what. But I think the exposure is still good!
We’ve used the Visits To series in our co-op for 4-5 years now with kids 6-18 years old. Retention has not been 100% for every student, but it’s good. My own kids (17, 14, 11, 8) have 75-85+% retention of all continents studied. I’d say that’s pretty great myself. For those with less retention, they’re still getting exposure.
I liken this to Artist Study for my ds14. He has always done it, but never cared for it. However, should we visit a museum, he is familiar with some styles and artists and can appreciate it even if it isn’t his thing.
I am planning to use this for the 1st time next year, so this may not work out the way I hope it will 🙂 I’ve been researching the program for a few months and my favorite way I’ve found to implement it is to have the children fill in their black-line map a few times a week. I found a YouTube mom that makes lots of copies of a map from the book for her children to fill in a new one each time, several times a week. I decided to laminate the map so we weren’t wasting so much paper. I’m hoping this should be a quick, easy way for them to memorize the countries between lessons!
I have my son map the countries every day using the blank map in the book. Handwriting is hard for him so he just points, so we save time and paper. 🙂
I don’t worry about retention that much. I see Visits to… as a great introduction and exposure to the world. I don’t worry if they can’t remember all the countries but I do find that when they hear of a country, even in passing, they pause and think about where they heard the name and then start talking with each other to try to remember where it is at. Often if they don’t get it right, they are pretty close 🙂 I know they know a lot more about the world and countries (and locations) than I ever did, even when I had finished highschool. They are hearing the names over and over and start to make connections when they hear about world events and even when missionaries talk at our church. I don’t worry about memorizing and high retention 🙂
I’ve been thinking of this, and I think it’s easy to feel like we need to “fill the bucket” when we are really trying to “light the fire.” They might not remember everything, but did it light a fire of interest? Did it inspire interest in a culture? My kids still remind me that there are people who use manure to build their houses, even if they can’t find the country on the map they learned about other people and those people are real to them. 🙂
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