I've been asked by a couple of readers (mostly a couple of teacher friends, and Teri out in Colorado) what I actually did when my daughter came home with the "memorization assignment" that I recently wrote about. Well...after I convinced her that peeing in her shoes would probably go over like a hand grenade in a bowl of oatmeal...we danced.
Yes. Dan Powell, the teacher on the edge, took his daughter into the living room and did a Baryshnikov: We put together a little dance that had specific moves for each and every one of those pesky prepositions. Gross motor movements united in one two minute dance. It looked a bit like we were swatting at bees. I thought my daughter was going to choke, she was laughing so hard. It's a great way to burn those fifty-plus little things into her muscle memory.
The fun didn't begin until she told me that while she was taking her test at school, she was jostling around in her seat so much doing the dance, that her teacher thought she was going to wet her pants. I told her as long as she didn't pee in her shoes, it would've been fine with me!
So next time you need to memorize, you need to make it meaningful, or kinesthetic, or both.
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