94 hours outside - April 2022

April - 94 hours (276 total)

April was a fun month of travel and family time. We spent a week in New Castle around Easter and got to visit the Indy Zoo (and dolphin show!). I took Carter (10) and Calvin (8) to Carter Caves for an overnight camping trip (the temperature got down to 39 at night! Brr!).  We had a blast hiking and exploring the natural bridges and playing miniature golf (which Carter claims is his favorite sport).  I went to a homeschool convention in Cincinnati, so Lucas took over with outside hours with the boys while I was gone, including a water play day with cousins and a Bluey Games day with some new friends.  We also got a membership to the children's garden and played there a couple times.

Here’s our month in daily 1 second increments: 

And here's our daily breakdown of hours outside:

1 - 3 hours Lansdowne-Merrick

2 - 3 hours yard

3 - 3 hours backyard, dinner

4 - 1.5 hours Memaw courtyard

5 - 1 hour (rain)

6 - 1.5 hours (rain)

7 - 10 hours Carter Cave (hiking, camping, mini golf)

8 - 12.5 hours Carter Cave

9 - 0

10 - 3 hours Nicholasville as a family

11 - 1 hour

12 - 5 hours N.C. yard, Baker

13 - 5 hours Indy Zoo (rain)

14 - 5 hours Memorial Park, Riley

15 - 3.5 yard, walk to Baker

16 - 2.5 hours Easter eggs, walk to Sunnyside

17 - 0.5 egg hunt Lex (chilly)

18 - 0 (chilly)

19 - 3 hours front and back

20 - 3 hours Arboretum, Shillito

21 - 1 hour (Lucas with boys)

22 - 2 hours Bluey Day (Lucas with boys)

23 - 3 hours water play at Mamaw and Papaw's (Lucas with boys)

24 - 3 hours front yard, church

25 - 1.5 hours - last day of co-op

26 - 6.5 hours Legacy Grove, walk to Southland

27 - 2 hours children's garden

28 - 4 hours forest, Harrods Hill with Sievers

29 - 2 hours yard, clearing for mowing

30 - 2 hours yard, dinner on table

82 hours outside - March 2022

March - 82 hours (182 total)

What an up and down month! We had chilly days with biting wind, sunny T-shirt days, and even a snow-accumulating day! By the end of the month, everything was in bloom, but we enjoyed the pre-bug, pre-poison ivy days! The sunshine has also brought out a lot of snakes (which Daddy gets rid of for us!). We spent a lot of time in our backyard forest (at least every Thursday but often more). We had a courtyard picnic with Memaw and ate lots of meals outside (usually MWF lunches and several dinners, too). We even walked to Wendy's for lunch! We found lots of geocaches and ended the month with 476 total caches (49 so far this year!). 

1 - 5 hours backyard, Wellington with Daddy

2 - 3.5 hours Centennial, Memaw courtyard

3 - 3 hours forest, yard

4 - 3 hours walk to Wendy's, pizza picnic

5 - 2 hours yard, reading

6 - 0 (rain)

7 - 1 hour

8 - 3 hours

9 - 2 hours Beaumont walk all 6 of us

10 - 4 hours forest, yard

11 - 4 hours Veterans Park, yard

12 - 1 hour (snow)

13 - 2 hours, under blankets

14 - 4 hours

15 - 3.5 hours yards

16 - 2.5 hours Nicholasville County Park

17 - 4.5 hours forest, Leprechaun treasure hunt, Sievers

18 - 4 hours Lou Johnson, Arboretum, book club

19 - 2 hours (cold)

20 - 3 hours backyard, dinner, snakes in tree

21 - 3 hours yard

23 - 2 hours Shillito (rain)

24 - 2 hours forest, Calvin date

25 - 3 hours Valley Park, yard (cold)

26 - 1 hour Stonewall Park (6 of us)

27 - 2 hours backyard

28 - 2 hours front yard 

29 - 0 hours (Cooper's birthday)

30 - 3.5 hours yard, dinner

31 - 2.5 hours forest, Rosa Parks

Do I retain the verses I memorize?

Recently, after posting my video recitation of the first chapter of Jonah, a friend responded with this question:

Do you retain the verses you learn? Can you still recite Romans?

That's a great question! And I have a lot of thoughts percolating in my mind regarding how to answer that! Here's the long version of how I would respond to her:

First off, it's always more fun for me to memorize new verses than to review previously-learned ones.  And for some people, their realistic goal is that they won't be able to keep every verse in perfect memory forever.  Andrew Davis, who has memorized over 35 books of the Bible, encourages others to "kiss the book goodbye" after reciting it every day for 100 days.  

While I may no longer be able to recite Romans perfectly, I don't want to "lose" all I've learned, either.  When I taught fourth and fifth grades at a Christian school, I told my students that I didn't want them to learn their memory verse just for the test on Friday; my hope was that they would still know these verses 30 years from now.  The way I primarily did this for them (and also for me!), is through songs.  Putting Scripture to song helps it to go to long-term memory.

Reciting a book like Romans in front of an audience is quite an undertaking, even more than just memorizing the book itself.  After taking about 10 months to learn Romans, I spent a whole month reviewing and reworking and relearning in order to have the confidence to recite it live.  Unfortunately, I don't have a great system to continue to review it to that level of mastery -- being able to recite it on demand.  I think if I were regularly reciting Romans in front of an audience, I'd have the motivation to keep it current. It's just overwhelming to try to recite it on a regular basis. I've thought about assigning days of the month to review certain chapters, but I haven't set that up yet.

With all that said, every verse that I have ever memorized is catalogued on the website BibleMemory.com, and I review every verse at a minimum of every three months.  Granted, this is often in the mode of being given every other word (see screenshot below), so that's not quite the same as reciting every word out loud. But still, it's one way that I try to keep all my verses in my long-term memory.    

 

That's the long answer. The short answer? I review regularly and have a general idea of all the verses I've memorized, but I would not be able to recite all of Romans on the spot.