Our Tri-Fold Board

For the first two years that we participated in Classical Conversations classes, I wrote out the memory work on our dry erase board each week at home and tried to keep it from getting erased, but there was not much space left over to be able to use the white board.  We did have lap sized dry erase boards, but sometimes I wanted a larger space.

Then, last year, I saw an example of a tri-fold board that Brandy Ferrell used for her memory work.  Voila!  What a great way to display the memory work visually, and not take up any space on our white board!  I went right to Staples and bought the supplies I needed.

Supplies needed: 
Tri-fold board
8 page protectors for 8.5x11" pages
putty or 8 page protectors for 8.5x5.5" pages
double sided tape
markers

I simply used the 8.5x11" page protectors and double sided tape to create horizontal spaces for each of the weekly memory work pages on the bottom half of the board.  Since I use putty to display all of our timeline cards on the wall, they are already sticky, so I just stick the timeline cards to the tri-fold board each week and then put the old ones back on the wall.  However, you could easily place the 8.5x5.5 sized page protectors in a row across the top for the timeline cards and the weekly science card.  I also asked my daughter to decorate the title for me and she made a bright and colorful design for each block letter.

Here is what we came up with:

It's not super fancy and it's not necessary, but it is a great help to all of us!  The tri-fold display keeps the memory work in front of us all week, but I can quickly turn it around when we want to try to recite without looking at it anymore.  I keep it in front of our white board, but I also move it when we need to write on the white board.  This is the post from Brandy Ferrell at Half-a-Hundred Acre Wood that inspired me to design my board and find files on CC Connected to display.

*You can create your own tri-fold display to set up any memory work or other good information to be displayed for your children.  Poetry, math facts, phonics sounds, scripture verses, and practically anything you can learn, you could display in this way, so the tri-fold board can be used for all classical educators who value memorization in the grammar stage of learning.*

I love our tri-fold board because it is an easy way to create another "wall" display that doesn't take up a wall and can be moved or put away easily. 

This post is linked to the Trivium-Tuesdays Classical Link-Up #117.  Hop over the the Link-Up to find more inspiration for classical education!