I'll probably only know it for about a day and a half because I have no long term memory, but I know it as I type this! The reason? It's on Anna's Social Studies test that we were cramming for tonight. I'm learning (or I guess, re-learning) so many things from studying with Anna. The sad part is I don't know most of this stuff so I have to actually read the text books, in order to help her learn it. I'm just going to pretend that I couldn't pass 4th grade at the age of 35.
My teaching methods can stand some improvement though. Anna has trouble remembering the names of things. She'll remember the first letter of a word, but not the word itself. So, tonight, she couldn't remember the Great Lakes. Her teacher had given them the acronym 'HOMES' as a way to remember the first letter of the lakes. She knew Erie and Michigan, but couldn't remember the other ones. So, here, my teaching methods come into play. I decided we'd take turns saying 'Huron' over and over until she could remember it. We realized it sounded a lot like 'Here, Ron' so I told her to pretend that she was calling someone named Ron over. Genius, I know. ;) I couldn't come up with a way to remember Ontario, but Emma did! Mark has a friend, Mr. Terry, that the girls know. So, Emma came up with 'On, Terry-O'. And Anna never forgot it after that.
She also couldn't remember the word 'peninsula'. She kept forgetting how the word started, so I told her to remember it sounds like penis at the beginning! You see, we kept using the state of Florida as an example, and it kinda hangs down like a . . . well, you see. Okay, a little demented, but hey, whatever helps the child remember the word!
By the time she went to bed, she was a wiz on U.S. Geography. For the rest of her life, she may not be able to go to Florida without thinking of a penis, but that's the sacrifice you make for a 4th grade Social Studies test.
(oh, it means 'foot of the mountain' by the way).
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