Here you will find the collection of videos and printables for the Year of Memory Work with Humility and Doxology. Bookmark this page, and make sure you are following Humility and Doxology on Facebook and/or YouTube so you don’t miss a week! And don’t forget to sign up for my email list for subscriber exclusives!
Are you looking for my Bible memory resources and free printables? Click here to see my free resources for Scripture memory in your homeschool!
Do you want a weekly poem delivered to your earbuds? Check out my daughter Grace’s Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Poems podcast here!
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What is the Year of Memory Work?
That’s right: 52 weeks of beautiful poetry, famous speeches, historic documents, and more are coming your way.
Poetry, speeches, lengthier passages of Scripture, and original historic documents are a key part of our family’s morning time routine. Considering the limits of our time and energy, I have chosen to focus on those elements rather than lists of facts.
Many families also desire to incorporate these elements of truth, goodness, and beauty in their daily routines, but are unsure where to begin.
Some may be stymied by indecision, feeling a burden to choose the “perfect” or the “best” poem or Bible verse. (Spoiler alert: there is no perfect memory list, and you won’t find a collection of memory work that will ensure your children become godly, brilliant, and kind.)
Other times, it is feelings of inadequacy that keep someone from incorporating memory work. Perhaps you don’t feel equipped to choose memory work, and you don’t even know where to go or how to start.
A Year of Memory Work to Inspire and Equip
Whether you relate to either of those challenges, neither, or something else entirely, my desire is to inspire you with this Year of Memory Work! I’ve curated a list for you from some of my favorite things. Each week, all you have to do is print out the pdf and recite along with me!
Whether you incorporate memory work in your morning time/circle time routine, poetry teatime, or read-aloud time before bed, I hope the Year of Memory Work enables you to more easily incorporate these beautiful elements into your family’s year.
Even your teens can get excited about poetry!
A Child's Introduction to P...Shop on AmazonI also hope you leave feeling equipped to choose and enjoy your own memory work in the years ahead.
Is there a selection you don’t care for in the Year of Memory Work? Skip it, of course! You can review a previous week’s selection, or be brave and choose your own poem.
Is there a bit of memory work that entrances your children and captures your imagination? Feel free to take a few extra weeks on that video.
These videos and this list are to be your tools, not your master. Use them as best fits in your schedule. May they be a blessing to you!
I would love to see pictures or videos of you or your children reciting some of the things we learn this year. You can tag me on social media (I’m @HumilityandDoxology on Instagram, and you can also find me on Facebook and Youtube) so I can like and comment!
Want even more poetry and memory work resources? Check out these other posts and videos:
- Ultimate Poetry Book List for Tots to Teens (and their adults)
- 12 Poems Everyone Should Know By Heart
- The 26 Best Historic Speeches For Homeschool Memory Work
- National Poetry Month resources
- Poem in Your Pocket Day printables
- Morning Time
- Can You Haiku?
- Shakespeare with Children
- YouTube playlist of my Year of Memory Work recitations
January
Week One: New Year’s Morning, Helen Hunt Jackson
Week Two: 1 Corinthians 13
Week Three: Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley
Week Four: The Iliad, lines 1-6; Homer (trans. Fitzgerald)
Recommended supplemental resources for your study: The Children’s Homer, the opening lines of the Iliad in Greek, Fitzgerald’s complete translation of the Iliad.
February
Week Five: Mother to Son, Langston Hughes
Recommended supplemental resources: 75+ Books celebrating the lives and achievements of African Americans , Coming Home: from the life of Langston Hughes, Floyd Cooper, Poetry for Young People: Langston Hughes
Week Six: Caedmon’s Hymn
Recommended Supplemental Resources: Textbook-Free History (also available in podcast form), Medieval History Resources (including other options for memory work), British Museum’s website with images of Bede’s manuscript, listen to this poem in Old English, the Modern Scholar series The Anglo-Saxon World, and The History of the English Language by Michael Drout
Week Seven: Sonnet 116, William Shakespeare
Recommended Supplemental Resources: How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare, by Ken Ludwig; Tales from Shakespeare, by Charles and Mary Lamb; Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare for children, by E. Nesbit; Shakespeare Stories, by Leon Garfield; “Shakespeare Live! from the RSC” (for parents and older students); Shakespeare’s Sonnets
My Ultimate Shakespeare Resource Round-Up
Week Eight: My Shadow, Robert Louis Stevenson
Recommended Supplemental Resources: A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson is a great poetry anthology to enjoy with children of all ages. Some of our favorites are “My Shadow,” “Bed in Summer,” and “The Swing.” Try to find an edition with gorgeous illustrations. Two of my favorite illustrators for A Child’s Garden of Verses are Gyo Fujikawa and Tasha Tudor.
Week Nine: Death Be Not Proud, John Donne
March
Week Ten: Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer
A Child's Introduction to P...Shop on AmazonWeek Eleven: Pied Beauty, Gerard Manley Hopkins
Don’t miss all the discussion questions shared in the video description! This poem lends itself as well to some art projects. Illustrate your printable on your own, or check out all the amazing nature art tutorials available at ChalkPastel.com!
Week Twelve: Nothing Gold Can Stay, Robert Frost
Week Thirteen: Casey at the Bat, Ernest Thayer
Recommended Supplemental Resources: These are great illustrated versions to add to your library- Casey at the Bat illustrated by Patricia Polacco and Casey at the Bat illustrated by Christopher Bing (a Caldecott Honor book). Be sure to check out this super fun (and free) baseball art tutorial.
Week 14: Jabberwocky, Lewis Carroll
April’s Memory Work
Week Eighteen: The Destruction of Sennacherib, Lord Byron
Week Seventeen: Amoretti LXVIII (Most Glorious Lord of Life), Edmund Spenser
Week Sixteen: Psalm 139:1-13
Week Fifteen: Paul Revere’s Ride, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Compare the events in the poem with the historic account given here. You can also read a letter Revere wrote to his friend in circa 1798. And Then What Happened, Paul Revere, by Jean Fritz, is a fun picture book for all ages! Have you read Johnny Tremaine? It’s a classic work of historical fiction, and Paul Revere is an important character. This anniversary edition has an introduction by Nathan Hale, the graphic historic novelist.
May’s Memory Work
Week Twenty-Two: The Lake Isle of Innisfree, W. B. Yeats
Week Twenty-One: King Alfred’s War Song
Week Twenty: Introduction to Evangeline, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Week Nineteen: The Reading Mother, Strickland Gillilan
June’s Memory Work
Week Twenty-Seven: The Declaration of Independence
Week Twenty-Six: Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death, Patrick Henry
Week Twenty-Five: The Wild Rose, Wendell Berry
Week Twenty-Four: If, Rudyard Kipling
Week Twenty-Three: June 4, 1940, Winston Churchill
July’s Memory Work
Week Thirty-One: Queen Elizabeth’s Speech to the Troops at Tilbury
Week Thirty: Sonnets from the Portuguese XXIX, Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Week Twenty-Nine: I’m Nobody! Who are You? Emily Dickinson
Week Twenty-Eight: Quality of Mercy, Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare
August’s Memory Work
Week Thirty-Five: Kubla Khan, Samuel Coleridge
Week Thirty-Four: The Tyger, William Blake
Discussion questions and activity ideas for “The Tyger”
Week Thirty-Three: Mneumonic for memorizing English monarchs
Week Thirty-Two: Sneezles, A. A. Milne
September’s Memory Work
Week Forty: Wynken, Blynken, and Nod, Eugene Field
Week Thirty-Nine: Autumn, Emily Dickinson
Week Thirty-Eight: A Walking Song, J.R.R. Tolkien
Week Thirty-Seven: Psalm 51
Week Thirty-Six: The Jumblies, Edward Lear
October’s Memory Work
Week Forty-Four: The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe
Week Forty-Three: St. Crispin’s Day (Henry V), William Shakespeare
Video here
Comparative Shakespeare playlist here
Week Forty-Two: Charge of the Light Brigade, Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Video here
Week Forty-One: Arithmetic, Carl Sandburg
November’s Memory Work
Week Forty-Eight: Paradise Lost, John Milton
Week Forty-Seven: Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln
Week Forty-Six: In Flanders Fields, John McCrae
Learn more about integrating memory work with what you’re learning here. What is textbook-free history? Enjoy these free history planning pages!
Week Forty-Five: Psalm 100
Grab the complete Thanksgiving Morning Time Plans and Resource Pack here.
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A Child's Introduction to P...Shop on AmazonDecember’s Memory Work
Bonus: John 1:1-5 in English, Latin, and Greek
Week Fifty-Two: The Lamb, William Blake
Week Fifty-One: In the Bleak Midwinter, Christina Georgina Rossetti
Week Fifty: I Heard a Bird Sing, Oliver Herford
Week Forty-Nine: The Nicene Creed
Why creeds anyway?
Advent resources
Ecumenical Creeds Resource Pack
Want even more poetry resources? Check out these other posts and videos:
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I loved your Christmas book list. I have been curating my own for several years and found a few that were not on your list you might enjoy.
1. Christmas day in the morning / Buck, Pearl S., Christmas themed, about a child’s sacrificial gift of doing dad’s chores for him. Very sweet.
2. The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry and illustrated by Lynch, P. J.
3. The Third Gift by Linda Sue Park (awesome, about Myrrh cultivation)
4. Christmas in the Trenches by John McCutcheon
5. The little drummer boy illustrated by Kristina Rodanas
6. The Gingerbread Doll by Susan Tews
7. Christmas in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder (picture book) ISBN 9780064434874
8. The Christmas Day Kitten Author: James Herriot
9. The legend of the candy cane / Walburg, Lori.
10. A letter for bear by Lucas, David, (bear delivers Christmas cards)
11. Christmas Cobwebs by Odds Bodkin (fiction about a family who lost home and German antique ornaments due to a house fire and spiders decorate their tree)
12. The Baker’s Dozen: A Colonial American Tale by Heather Forest
13. Silver packages an Appalachian Christmas story by cynthia rylant
Thank you! Off to check my library holds… 🙂