Drills

One of our favorite parts of the day are our drills. We do drills every morning to wind up our morning meeting. I will call out a drill and then the kids will see how fast they can complete the drill. For example - today we drilled the 50 states (with the Fifty Nifty United States song - always a hit), definition of a pronoun, list of pronouns, the books of the Old Testament, books of the New Testament, books of the Book of Mormon, Latter-day Prophets, and the current Apostles. Most of these are just the songs from the Primary Songbook, but the kids love to sing them as fast as they can.

Why drill? As Susan Wise Bauer states -

Classical education depends on a three-part process of training the mind. The early years of school are spent in absorbing facts, systematically laying the foundations for advanced study. In the middle grades, students learn to think through arguments. In the high school years, they learn to express themselves. This classical pattern is called the trivium.

The first years of schooling are called the “grammar stage” — not because you spend four years doing English, but because these are the years in which the building blocks for all other learning are laid, just as grammar is the foundation for language. In the elementary school years — what we commonly think of as grades one through four — the mind is ready to absorb information. Children at this age actually find memorization fun. So during this period, education involves not self-expression and self-discovery, but rather the learning of facts. Rules of phonics and spelling, rules of grammar, poems, the vocabulary of foreign languages, the stories of history and literature, descriptions of plants and animals and the human body, the facts of mathematics — the list goes on. This information makes up the “grammar,” or the basic building blocks, for the second stage of education (The Well Trained Mind).

At the school I taught at before I had John, we drilled every day. Throughout the year I saw, first hand, the benefits that drilling had for the students. As both of my children are firmly in the grammar stage, ready to absorb as much information as possible, drilling seemed a fun way to reinforce the facts that we are learning. The kids love it, I can't seem to keep up with their demand for new and exciting drills. So if you happen to be on my doorstep around 9:30 AM on a school day, don't be surprised if you hear us drilling loud and clear!