Over the past few days I've been learning the truth of an old Russian saying I'd forgotten: "repetition is the mother of learning" (of course in the Russian language it's a much more lyrical saying, but it's still worth repeating in English). I've seen it's value in more than one area:
Math: believe it or not, after only a few short days Little Miss History is becoming much more proficient at her subtraction facts. It just took a lot of drilling over and over and over, but enough repetitions and it began to stick.
Scripture memory: I've only got one verse to go and I'll have gotten all of Deuteronomy 6 down. My secret? I carry laminated verse cards in my purse. Then when I'm out and about I pull them out. Stop lights are good times to read them over. Then while driving I just repeat them out loud over and over until I get to the next light. Second-hand benefit? My kids end up learning along with me, whether they want to or not. They're a captive audience.
New skills: There's nothing like doing the same action over and over again to learn a new skill. For example, Musing Dad took Little Miss History skiing a couple of weeks ago. This is an annual tradition for them. Good father/daughter bonding time. This year after a 2 hour class with lots of up and down repetition on the slopes LMH had actually gotten the hang of really skiing, turning both directions and slowing down if she needed to. For further practice she and Musing Dad took the fast lift up and did a few runs down the green hill together, up and down. But then Musing Dad took her up and let her go down on her own while he did a couple of black runs on his own. Musing Mom's reaction when she learned this afterwards? Musing Dad, repeat after me: "I will not send a seven-year-old down the ski hill alone. I will not send a seven-year-old down a ski hill alone. I will not...".
Monday, March 05, 2007
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6 musings:
Do you speak any Russian?
No, just that which she chooses to.
Da. Nimnoshka. I speak less and less Russian as time goes by (who to speak it with?). And more often these days I end up mixing Spanish and Russian together. It gets ugly. Pretty soon nobody will be able to understand me.
Karashoa, Senora.
conversely, if I want to forget something, I guess I should stop paying attention to it!
LL-good point. Funny how it actually can take conscious effort at times. Why is it that we ruminate on the bad or worthless stuff so readily and have a hard time fixing our attention on the good stuff?
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