MENTAL MANIPULATION FOR LONG-TERM MEMORY.

Mental Manipulation for Long-term memory.  

The most successful forms of review are those that give your children opportunities to actively think, interpret, and analyze the information in their prefrontal cortex where long-term memories are constructed. Each time learning is recalled or used the repeated neural activation makes the memory circuit stronger - like exercising a muscle.

Promote this memory strength with mental manipulation of new learning. One such manipulation is to have your child sum up new learning in her own words. Ways to do this include having one child "teach" the information to a sibling, to the family at the dinner table, or during a car ride. Children can also write summaries of the day's learning in a log or journal dedicated to the subject and add their choice of personalized artwork, diagrams, pictures from magazines or the Internet.

Other ways of cementing learning is by synthesizing understanding. This occurs when children use the learning and transfer it to represent it in a new way. These opportunities can be linked with your children's talents and interests such as creating a webpage or PowerPoint, designing a board game, writing or illustrating the topic in a book or video for a younger child, creating a brochure or other advertising materials about the topic ("Come see the fiords of Norway", "Why you should join the Jamestown Colony", or "Live in Michigan and get to experience all phases of the precipitation cycle".

Memory-sustaining manipulations are especially strong when carried out within the first 24-hours of new learning. To encourage this habit, encourage your child to make more connections between the new learning and things he already knows so his brain stores new learning in more than one relational memory circuit.

Each time your child recognizes more relationships between new learning and prior knowledge, it will change his brain as neuroplasticity stimulates more connections and stronger links between the brains' nerve cell circuits. This is the "neurons that fire together, wire together" process that constructs more paths linking up with the new learning (axon coating - synapses-dendrites) to keep it embedded in long-term memory.

Charts and diagrams such as a piece of butcher block paper on your daughter's wall where she adds new topic information as she learns it is a great visual organizer to strengthen and build memory links. Positive emotional strength is added when she adds her own opinions or sketches that represent her feelings about the informatio. 

You'll See The Changes

Source: girl jump for joy

You will not only help your children's test success, but also help them build better brains by increasing their ability to connect learning with positive experiences, interests, prior knowledge, and existing memory patterns. With enjoyable review activities that connect with your children's learning strengths, their brains own neuroplasticity will build more efficient neural networks to store and help them quickly retrieve the information they study. Each memory building and strengthening process paves the way for the next success as learning promotes learning. It is a great cycle to build.