Mnemonics

Mnemonics (the first m is silent) are tricks or strategies to help you remember information. A mnemonic can be a word, phrase, a rhyme, a song, or anything else you use to help you remember something. One mnemonic you know already is the alphabet song. This help kids remember the letters of the alphabet. Below are some other examples:

HOMES

Knowing the mnemonic H.O.M.E.S. can help you remember the names of the Great Lakes: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Eerie, and Superior. This mnemonic uses the first letter of each lake to create another common word.

spring forward, fall back

This mnemonic helps us to remember to move our clocks forward in the spring for daylight savings time and backward in the fall. It uses the double meanings of spring and fall—it makes sense that a coiled spring would move something forward, and when you fall, you tend to fall backwards.

knuckle mnemonic

This mnemonic uses your knuckles to remember which months have 30 days and which have 31 (or 28). The higher bumps of your knuckles let you know a higher number should match, while the dips between your knuckles are lower, helping you remember a lower number corresponds with the dips.

Dessert  vs  desert

A dessert is something sweet you typically have at the end of a meal. Desert (pronounced the same way) is to abandon someone or something.

When trying to decide which spelling to use, you can remember that you want seconds of dessert so you will need a second s, while "desert" has abandoned one of its s's.

Even though the geographical place that doesn't get much rain (desert) is pronounced differently, this mnemonic can help with its spelling, too!