The most important part of building a solid foundation for learning in the classroom and beyond is our memory. With a great memory, your child can do better in school, achieve better grades and perform tasks well. But not everyone is gifted with sharp memory skills. But like any other skill, you can develop and improve your memory skills by practicing.
Kids love to learn in a fun way. So, let’s make learning fun for them with these fun memory tricks!
Help make connections by using mnemonics
One effective way to make information more memorable is to use fun mnemonics. This method is also used in the rainbow trick—nope, this is not the soccer rainbow trick that Neymar flawlessly executes. We are talking about a fun trick used to help your kids learn the order of the colors in the rainbow. You might have heard Roy G. Biv and wondered who he is. Well, it’s a made-up name that stands for Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet.
“Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally” has been a popular aid for children to navigate math procedures. ‘HOMES’ helps them recall the five great lakes. This strategy makes it easier for your child to remember a list of words or phrases.
Play memory games
How do memory games help your child? They obviously help develop your child’s working memory, visualization, and concentration. There are a lot of traditional games you can follow, like Memory Matching Game—the classic favorite game of memory among children. So, let’s say you’re teaching your child geography. Make sure the set of cards contains countries and their capitals. Shuffle them and face the cards down on the table. Let your child pick two cards that should match. If the cards don’t match, they should be returned to their position.
A child’s success in completing this task relies on the child remembering where he or she has seen the picture in the previous turns. What a great way to exercise your child’s memory skills!
Another fun memory trick is the game called ‘What Is Missing?’ Let’s say you’re teaching your child geometric shapes. Create cutouts of each shape with their corresponding names and place them on the table. It’s important to note that for younger children, start with just 3-4 shapes, and you can go from there. Let your child take a look at those shapes and name them together. Then ask your child to cover their eyes—oh, and no peeking! Then remove one shape. Ask your child to open their eyes and let them tell you what shape is missing!
Use the power of music!
Songs always get stuck in our heads no matter how much we try to resist them—like a never-ending loop in your head. Ever heard of last song syndrome? Yup, that is what you experience when you hear a song a couple of times during your daily activities; and consequently, you catch yourself subconsciously singing the same song. It’s like our brains, for some reason, make us think about that song—and it makes sense because our brains are wired to music.
So why not use this method when memorizing information? Use an existing song that your child enjoys, but make your own rendition by inserting the information based on the song’s melody.
Add color to boring texts
Although our brain can process 11 million bits of information per second, our conscious minds can only handle 40 to 50 bits of it per second. Mysteriously, the color gets through our brain well, and we should take this advantage when learning. Use colored markers or highlighters to mark important phrases in your child’s reading exercise. You can also use multi-colored Post-its to note key learning ideas.
Use visual aids
Kids are visual learners. Visual aids function as memory aids; it helps kids grasp information. Kids are encouraged to associate between pieces of information and soak them up quickly. Let’s say your child is learning about the U.S Presidents. Use a bulletin board and place the pictures of each president and flashcards under each photo. The flashcards should contain their first and last names with a unique fact about them. Let your child review them; then remove the flashcards and shuffle them up. Let your child match the flashcards to the corresponding presidents and see how many names your child can correctly match.
Stimulate prior knowledge
This is an age-old trick to activate your child’s prior knowledge. When you start a lesson with ‘has anyone ever’, ‘what do you think,’ or ‘what do you know, you are actually stimulating the synapses in your child’s brain. This process prepares them to store memory better.
But of course, every brain works differently. Our goal is to teach our kids the best strategies that work for them—to help them store information quickly.
Leave a Reply