We know that simply exposing a student to new information by reading or watching a video is not enough to assure mastery. If it were, our job as homeschoolers would be much easier, wouldn’t it? Children (and adults!) need focused attention and review to move information into long-term memory so it can be used to make connections and solve problems. If you’ve ever tried to teach algebra to a child with a shaky grasp of fractions, or to explain Spanish grammar to someone who doesn’t know the parts of speech, you will understand why having a solid foundation of memorized facts, definitions, and concepts is vital to academic success—not to mention adult competence.
Despite the established science of memory, not all homeschool curricula include explicit memory work. Many of those that do package that information with religious or political perspectives that may not reflect your own. As reference books disappear behind paywalls, digital textbooks are embedded in proprietary Learning Management Systems, and free online sources rely on generative AI, it is increasingly difficult for parents to find reliable sources for secular memory work.
You could comb through each and every curriculum you use with your children to pull out the most important facts and definitions. That’s what I did when I was homeschooling my daughter. Eventually I decided that it was easier to create a general collection of things that it would benefit every student to know by heart, and so Living Memory was born.
Living Memory is not a curriculum. It’s a handy reference book designed to help parents bridge the gap between exposure and mastery with strategic memorization.
Memory work does not introduce students to new information; that’s what your curriculum is for. Instead, memory work supports student learning by summarizing learned material, highlighting the most important information, and moving it into long-term memory through targeted retrieval practice.
Living Memory doesn’t specify grade levels for each memory work item because memory work should correspond to the topics students are currently learning in each of the four main content areas: English Language Arts, Social Studies, Math, and Science. After all, there’s little point in having a 2nd grader memorize a timeline for medieval history if they’re studying American history that year! Memory work is the opposite of “rote memorization,” that is, memorization without understanding. Remember, content without context is mere trivia.
To select relevant memory work items from Living Memory, look at the scope and sequence (or the table of contents) for each curriculum you’re using to see what topics are covered and in what order. After your student has been introduced to a topic in your curriculum, bring in memory work to clarify and solidify what they have learned.
For example, once your student has been introduced to the four basic sentence types in their writing or grammar curriculum, you would have them memorize the information at the top of page 16 in Living Memory, which names and describes each sentence type along with its characteristic end punctuation. Likewise, after a unit on the three branches of the US government, you would have your student make memory work cards for the information on page 46, which lists the responsibilities of each branch, along with the elected officials or governmental bodies that fulfill them.
Most people find it helpful to go through Living Memory as part of the planning process for the new school year so they can select content that matches with what their children will be learning. You can make a note in your planner with the relevant page number in Living Memory or print out individual pages to place in a planning binder.
The introduction to Living Memory includes instructions for setting up a memory work system and making memory work a part of your daily homeschool routine. In practice, memory work takes only a few minutes a day, but the rewards last a lifetime.
For more information on memory science and education, see Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Peter C. Brown, et al.
Copyright 2026 by Drew Campbell, PhD. All rights reserved.
Drew Campbell is the author of Living Memory, I Speak Latin, and Exploring the World through Story, and co-author, with Courtney Ostaff and Jennifer Naughton, of How to Homeschool the Kids You Have. She is a veteran homeschooler and has worked as a classroom teacher, private school administrator, and independent tutor.