memorization

Memorizing Hint…In the Middle of the Night

Just heard this memorizing hint, which probably isn’t good for a younger child. But for high schoolers and college age kids – and their parents, it sounds very promising.

If you have to memorize anything that can be put onto notecards, set a stack of the cards beside your alarm clock, and set the clock to go off in the middle of the night. When the alarm sounds, go through the cards very briefly, then go back to sleep.

The person explaining this said that he learned it from a college professor, and that it really, really worked.

What do you think?

Focus Pocus – 100 Ways to Help Your Child Pay Attention

Children with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder all have one thing in common – the inability to sustain and focus attention. But every child – ADHD or not – occasionally has problems staying on task and avoiding distraction.

As parents and teachers – we try to conjure up ways to help them focus. As if they were magical spells, we say such things as, “Listen!” “Pay attention!” “Stop daydreaming!” “Think!” “FOCUS!”

But the spells rarely work. To complicate things, once we find a trick that works, the magic wears off, and the clock strikes twelve. As a result, we are constantly looking for new hints, new strategies, and new ways to charm kids through that next session of homework or that next hour of math.

I’ve been there over and over again with my boys, my students, some of my friends, and even myself. With all of our attempts at alchemy, we did find a few things that worked.

“Focus Pocus” lists one hundred of our very best hints on how to help kids pay attention. They’ll help parents, they’ll help teachers, and most of all, they’ll help our kids.

Of course, none of the hints are really magical. None of them will work all the time. But chances are you’ll find at least one that will help you with the challenge you’re facing today. Tomorrow I’ll post some of the hints from Focus Pocus – 100 Ways to Help Your Child Pay Attention. You can read them all by getting your guide today!

PS Don’t miss the special offer of getting Focus Pocus with a bonus copy of Waking Up from the Homework Nightmare!

Memorization Hint…

The human mind remembers best the first and last things it encounters. This is why telephone numbers and social security numbers are hyphenated. When studying with your child, sometimes it helps to break the sessions into small sets of information, so there are more beginnings and ends. If you have 20 vocabulary words, for example, study the first five after school, the second set right before dinner, the third set after dinner, and the last before bed.

Like this hint? Then you need to check out Memory Training for Students? For those of you that got the program, don’t you love it? Write and tell me how it’s going for you! If you missed my plug last week…Memory Training for Students teaches very powerful techniques to solve the problem of memorizing the information students need to know. It’s great for school, and it’s great for life. (Yes, I’ve used the stuff!) If you and your child have reviewed information over and over, only to have it disappear at test time or shortly thereafter, you need Memory Training. The program is an instant download of a set of five audio .mp3’s and a workbook. They are fun to listen to, and easy to follow. Go check it out now, and then forward this newsletter to others – your child’s teacher, your best friend, your family…

Demonic Mnemonics

Sometimes the small things make all the difference. Like in memorization. My first introduction to the word Mnemonic came with the disclaimer that it was a ‘demon’ to pronounce. I never forgot that word. Nor will I ever forget the following devices, that I hope will help your child, too.

The place values in the metric system:
King Henry Doesn’t Usually Drink Chocolate Milk or King Henry Died By Drinking Chocolate Milk
Kilo Hecto Deka Unit (or Base) Deci Centi Milli

Order of Operations:
Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally
Parentheses (and other symbols of inclusion); Exponents; Multiplication and Division, in order from left to right; Addition and Subtraction, in order from left to right.

The first ten elements in the periodic table:
Ha. HEalthy LIttle BEggar BOys CAtching NEwts OR FIsh
H HE LI BE BO CA NE OR FI

The Great Lakes, in order from west to east:
Sam’s Horse Must Eat Oats
Superior, Huron, Michigan, Erie, Ontario

The colors of the rainbow, in order:
ROY G. BIV (pronounced like a person’s name)
Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet

The planets in order:
My Very Educated Mother Just Sent Us Nine Pizzas
or My vampire eats marshmallows just sitting under new planets.
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. Disclaimer: Pluto has lost its planetary standing, now, so we’ll have to learn a new one.

How to remember the difference between the spelling of hear and here:
You hear with your ear.

And another spelling hint is:
The Principal is your pal.

For those of you who are boaters, or for the rest of us who just read about it:
We left port and went right to starboard.

If you’re looking for a mnemonic for something specific, Google it like this: “Mnemonic for _________”. You’ll be amazed at the memorization hints. And for even more ideas, go to Google images. If you’re enjoying this way too much, browse through the books on Amazon. There are mnemonics books for everything from anatomy to Spanish to pharmacology. And nice mundane things like math and biology.