It may seem like a no-brainer, but I’ve been thinking a lot this year about how personal memories are often the most meaningful learning experiences.

Many of us know this intuitively-but, we may forget to use these stories in our homeschool teaching!

This year, we have been doing Apologia’s Anatomy curriculum in our homeschool. (You may have already read about our experience in my curriculum reviews here and here, from earlier this year). Several years ago when we started homeschooling, I discovered the power of using living books in my teaching–not just for obvious subjects like literature and history, but even for more left-brained subjects like math and science! (If this piques your interest, I wrote all about it in this post.)

While living books have been a godsend for us, a few months ago I realized how powerful my own personal stories could be. Ever since I can remember, I have told my kids stories. It started as a way to get them to sleep at night, but–my eldest daughter, especially, often begs me to “tell me a story of when you were little.” I have tried to do that as often as possible, this year, especially if it can link to our learning in a meaningful way.

Real-Life Stories Told Spontaneously

Telling your kids meaningful stories isn’t rocket science, and it often happens organically! Just a few moments ago, my son was sitting next to me working on his 4th grade math book. He read the word “capacity” in a humorous way, mispronouncing it. I gently corrected him, and he laughed. A memory suddenly came bouncing back to me, out of the blue! I remembered one of my own blunders, as a fourth grader, reading aloud in class, some 28 years ago. The word in the story was “rendezvous,” and, well, I sounded it out and spoke it aloud, phonetically. I still remember the uncertain tone of my shy voice, saying, “ren…DEZ…vous?!” My teacher smiled, and gently restated the French word’s correct pronunciation, “RON-day-voo!” Luckily for me, no one else in my class knew the word either, so no one laughed at my little blunder. 🙂

I told my son this story and he was pretty amused! It was a small way to communicate to him that even parents mispronounce words sometimes. It was a small connection we made together. Nothing flashy, and not planned–but meaningful nonetheless.

Real-Life Stories as Planned Lessons

While many of my stories happen organically, some of them are planned. When we studied the Nervous System in Anatomy this year, I knew we would spend a lot of time on the brain. As I was reviewing the chapter before reading it to my kids, I realized that I couldn’t even remember all of the various lobes in our brain, and their respective functions! I tried to think of relatable memory devices, or little anecdotes we could use to remember each one.

When I saw the term “occipital lobe,” referring to the lobe of your brain in the back of your head, just above the base of your skull, I remembered hearing that phrase a lot in high school! In high school I would get debilitating headaches almost every day. My mom was a PT, and she would show me how to put pressure on the base of my skull to help relieve some of that tension. I would sometimes lay my head on two tennis balls! While I wouldn’t have remembered the vocabulary otherwise, the “occipital lobe” will always remind me of the headaches that hurt right in that spot, because I experienced that myself. So, this was a small detail I told to my kids, to help them remember the location of that brain lobe.

Another personal story special to our family has to do with the temporal lobe, and its job regarding short-term memory! All four of my kids loved the Disney movie Finding Dory, and as we all know, Dory “suffers from short-term memory loss!” So, a fun way to remember the temporal lobe was to think of her. We drew little pictures of Dory on our brain diagrams, as a memory device.

Real Life Stories Help All Students

As I was writing this post, another example came to mind. Years ago, before kids, my first teaching job was in Texas. I taught middle school Spanish. Our school was an International Baccalaureate School, and had certain character traits we would learn about all year. Some of the character traits were a bit abstract, especially to middle schoolers with other things on their mind, so I would often tell personal stories to help them grasp the trait and make it more meaningful.

I remember one particular trait was “Risk Taker.” Now, I am not real a risk-taker in any way, shape, or form. So, this is not the most amazing example, BUT- I told the kids that I had made a decision to be courageous, in a college class I took. I took a Public Speaking class while I was home from Wheaton on break one summer, at my local community college. I didn’t know a soul in the class. I also was pretty afraid of public speaking in front of adults. My courageous “risk” was that for each new speech we had to perform, I would volunteer to go first.

I explained the details to my middle school students, and they smirked at the thought of their teacher being afraid of public speaking…how could a teacher be afraid of that?! But I was–particularly in front of adults. I didn’t want to do it, but I pushed myself, and volunteered to go first every speech. It was a great growing experience for me!

I did a little experiment in that middle school Spanish class, and always put a few IB character-trait-related questions on our tests each unit. When asked to recall examples of what each character trait meant, my students recalled my stories surprisingly well. Because, they were personal! And personal stories are often more memorable than abstract concepts.

That’s all for today! I hope this prompts you to think of little anecdotes to tell your own kids, as you continue in your homeschool journey. Any story from mom or dad is going to be more impactful than what you can read secondhand, from someone else’s story–so use it when you can!

Cait