I made eight Memory Work packets for us for this school year (you’ll find them in the sidebar if you’d like to use them also). I’m planned that we will do one set of Memory Work a month for four months, and then we’ll take a month off for Christmas before we do four more.
But here is the part that may surprise you: I don’t care if we finish it all.
You see, I decided how much I think we can do, but I might be wrong. I can’t foresee illness, emergency, or things just taking longer than I expect. But if we accomplished only one packet all the way, we will have learned a new poem, a new folk song, a new hymn, and a new section of the Book of Philippians. Those little bits are worth the work even if we don’t accomplish more than that.
You see, if you learn one hymn a term (whether you have two or three or four terms), you’ll know more hymns at the end of the year than you do now. If you learn one poem a year, you’ll graduate with more poetry furnishing your mind than most of the population. If I look at one painting a week for thirty weeks, that is thirty paintings. But if I look at one painting every week for thirty weeks every year for 12 years, that is 360 paintings stored in my memory for later.
We aren’t called at all to do everything perfectly. We simply expected to work faithfully. If we want to learn these things with our sons and daughters so that their minds and ours are well-furnished, we just need to try. Perfection isn’t required or even expected. We just have to do the next right thing.