Visualization or being able to see something in your mind’s eye is a great way to retain more material. Stories used as silly memory tricks can help your homeschool students remember lessons in their text books for a lifetime. Our brain remembers things that it finds interesting much more easily than things that it delegates to the difficult quadrant.
Creating Lively Metaphors
Metaphors can create a connection between totally unrelated things and if you make them silly enough they become very memorable. Take for instance the difference between the two scientific terms cation and anion. A lively metaphor that can be used to remember what each type of ion represents can be likening a cation to a cat, who has paws and so is positive. While an anion is rather like an onion which becomes negative as it makes you cry when you chop it. This is a very simple example of how associating one thing with something else totally unrelated can actually help the homeschool student remember it better.
Pairing the Familiar with the Unfamiliar in Analogies
While metaphors ask you to apply properties to an object which it really may not have, an analogy asks you to compare two things that may have hidden similarities. Think of the analogy in the movie Forest Gump where Tom Hanks said his mother thought life was like a box of chocolates. Here the different types of chocolates inside a box where an analogy for the different types of experiences that life can bring to you. The same concept can be applied to create analogies during study hours.
Creative Visualization is a Huge Memory Tool
Allow your homeschool students to exercise their creativity and imagination by coming up with different creative visualizations to memorize sections of their studies. As a homeschool teacher you could start them off with a couple of examples on how to use this memory tool. Then have them come up with ways that they can memorize other stuff using the same technique. It will amaze you at how easily they can make up silly stories to keep track of study facts as they memorize everything.
