How To Educate Children Using Simple Memory Techniques

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

How to educate children: Improving concentration

Leonardo Da Vinci once said;

“Study without desire spoils the memory and it retains nothing that it takes in.”

Never were truer words spoken, especially when it comes to knowing how to educate children.

Children, like adults will take in new information better if it is taught to them in an interesting way as this helps them to concentrate better and will make it easier to focus on the topic in hand.

So how can we help our children when it comes to improving concentration and helping to improve their memory to retain the information that they are taught?

How to educate children: Memory Improvement Tips

Even before they go to school it is possible to improve a child’s memory through play.

I know my own children used to love playing games like matching pairs of pictures together and another favourite was to place several items on a tray and then cover them with a cloth and asking them to remember as many of the items on the tray as possible…

A bit like the conveyor belt on the “Generation Game” for those of you old enough to remember! Then as they got better at this game I used to remove an item from the tray and ask them to name what item had been removed .

This game can even be adapted to be played outdoors on finer days by using outdoor items instead like flowers, twigs, balls, cones, stones and so on. Playing memory games like this can be very effective for helping your child develop their memory ready for school.

How To Educate Children: My Children Already Know The Pie Number !

By the age of 9 and 10 my children already knew the first 10 numbers of pie and the first 10 countries to join the E.U. by using simple memory techniques that I learnt when watching a DVD by a renowned memory world champion. The memory techniques that he shows help to store the information into the long term memory rather than the short term one…and it really does work as we can all still remember the information over a year later! The methods he teaches are easy and were as follows.

Remembering The Pie Number

If you were to be asked how to remember the first 10 numbers of pie straight off, chances are that most of us would struggle. The numbers are 3.1415926535

However if you apply simple memory improvement techniques like linking pictures to the numbers ,the information becomes easier to process.

For example, just visualize the images within this short extract and by the end of it ,you too will know the pie number.

“You are walking into your old school and you look at the clock in front of you and it is showing 14.15. As you walk through the door there is a balloon floating in the air and the balloon reminds you of the number 9. The balloon is tied around the neck of a swan and the neck resembles the number 2. As you walk into the main hall there is an extraordinary sight in front of you, namely a man of 65 marrying a woman of 35!

Put all of the images together with their representative numbers and you have then memorized the first 10 numbers of pie!

The same sort of process can be applied to memorizing the first 10 countries to join the E.U. Again my children knew this information by the ages of 9 and 10 simply by associating pictures but to words this time. For example;

Think of 10 different rooms in your house (if you haven’t got enough rooms then you can also use the garden) and then place objects, like the following, into each room in your mind. For example;

Room 1 …Belgium…Picture a bell (town crier ringing a bell, school bell ringing etc)

Room 2 …Denmark….Think of bacon frying

Room 3 …France…Think of the Eiffel tower. Try to make it stand out in your mind e.g. has it got yellow spots?

Room 4 …Germany…Think of a famous tennis player e.g. Boris Becker (or in the case of my children who are too young to remember Boris Becker they think of their Nan who is German.

Room 5 …Greece…Think of something greasy like chips or oil on a car

Room 6 …Ireland…Think of a well known Irish celebrity like a member of Westlife

Room 7 …Italy…Think of Italian ice cream of pasta

Room 8 …Luxembourg…Think of a crackling old radio playing radio Luxembourg

Room 9 …Netherlands…Think of a net like a basket ball net or fishing net

Room 10 …Portugal…think of someone drinking an expensive glass of port or a boat within a port

Room 11 …Spain and U.K. think of someone British like The Prime Minister David Cameron being charged by a Spanish bull!

And there you have it…You have now helped to educate your child (and possible yourself) on the first 10 countries to join the E.U.

This process can be used to store any information for any kind of topic e.g. kings and queens in history.

How To Educate Children: Memory Improvement Techniques

As children get older and need to study for exams both in school and in higher education, good memory improvement tips will help them to process the information easier and quicker.

The memory techniques that they will have already learnt as they were growing up will have already helped them enormously but using simple memory improvement techniques will also help them study better for examinations.

For example you could educate your child to memorize those dreaded feminine and masculine (and even neutral in German) words within languages by simplifying the process. For example you could think of your town and split it into different routes…One street could have the feminine words, another part of the town could have masculine words and the park could have all the neutral words. Again you could also find word associations to remember the various words.

Also playing games can also help older children to remember important information easier. For example, last Christmas we bought our daughters a flag card game that not only helps them to learn the flags of each country but the game also awards extra bonuses if you can name the capitals of those countries. This can be a great way to learn (for adults as well as children!) and to take in important information. In fact it’s so much fun that even their friends love playing it when they come over.

How to educate children

When thinking of ways of how to educate children, using simple memory techniques is the answer to making it effective and fun.

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