In collaboration with Classical Conversations, a homeschooling aid with programs to help students learn, the National Memory Master Competition is helping children tackle subjects faster, and retain the information longer.
Peyton McGuire is a home schooled student in Oxford Mississippi who has submitted a video for the competition. Only students 11-12 can enter and the top 16 will compete on a cruise for the title and a chance to win $10,000.
“They’re quizzed in seven different subjects, history, geography, science, a timeline, Latin, English grammar, math, and they have to be able to say it word for word, verbatim,” said Peyton’s mom Missy.
Students use memorization teaching tools to like audio CD’s to learn the facts they will be reciting. First they recite them to one parent (or adult) with only 3-4 mistakes, then they do that again with the other parent with no more than one error per subject . Next they recite it to the tutor and director and must have no errors at all.
“You basically have to study your butt off,” said Peyton. “There is an app and it will ask you the questions and some of the subjects have songs that will help you memorize them so that makes it easier.”
Peyton got involved with Memory Masters through a home school program called Classical Conversations, a program for homeschooling parents who want to teach their children with a classical model. It is a nationwide organization with communities around the company.
“The benefit of the program is that it is the same anywhere you go so if you move to California they’ll be doing the exact same cycle and the weeks are the same,” said Missy.
“Peyton has been educated through Classical Conversations since first grade, so six years now,” said Peyton’s dad Justin. “Memory Masters is an award that is given through Classical Conversations for students who memorize all that information.”
Peyton tends to study a few subjects each day to get better at her facts. She also traces the globe to practice her memorization of the globe.
The program repeats itself so the memorization isn’t lost, it is retained for the students as they move through elementary, middle, and high school while also adding more to it.
“I think history is my favorite just because they all have seperate songs and it’s fun to learn,” said Peyton.”Some of them are really upbeat songs, or some of them are kind of sad down songs but they’re just fun to memorize.”
On Feb. 10, National Memory Master announced the story prompt for qualified students to retell on video an interesting story using history facts from the Foundations program in Classical Conversations.
You can watch and vote for Peyton’s video submission HERE.
