The Big Book of Memory Tricks — Primary (CP–CM2)

“Mum, what's 9 times 7?” Silence at the table. A panicked look. And you, searching for a way to help without turning dinner into a written test.

Every evening, the same struggles: times tables that just won't stick, confusing “a” and “à”, planets out of order. And this summer, with 8 weeks off school, everything they've learned this year could quietly slip away.

Yet the pupils who put their hands up first have a secret. Not a gift: clever tricks. The 9 times table you can count on your fingers. “Mais où est donc Ornicar?” for conjunctions. A magic phrase to remember the planets in order. The Big Book of Memory Tricks is the notebook of tips that top students keep to themselves — finally brought together in one book, from CP (Year 2) to CM2 (Year 6).

What this book contains

• 171 mnemonic tricks divided into 9 main sections, from maths to everyday tips
• 88 fun, self-correcting exercises to help anchor the tricks
• 102 pages covering the whole of primary school, from CP (Year 2) to CM2 (Year 6)
• Colourful cards, one trick at a time: just 5 minutes needed

Who is it for?

• Children from CP (Year 2) to CM2 (Year 6) who struggle with times tables, spelling, or lessons to “learn by heart”
• Parents who want homework without tears (theirs or yours!)
• One book for the whole family, year after year

Imagine, in a few weeks…

It's back to school. The teacher asks: “Who knows the 9 times table?” A hand goes up first. Theirs. 😊 Because this summer, between swims, they picked up tricks from their book — without even feeling like they were revising.

An hour of private tuition costs around €30. This book costs €24.99 — and it lasts from CP (Year 2) to CM2 (Year 6), for all your children.

📦 FREE delivery in mainland France · 🖨️ Printed on demand in Europe, just for your order · 🔒 Secure payment

Give them the notebook of top students’ tricks — they won’t want to put it down.

A book of mnemonic devices for children, from CP (Year 2) to CM2 (Year 6)

A mnemonic device is a phrase, picture or gesture that helps fix a lesson in memory. There’s no magic: the brain remembers things that are funny, rhythmic or visual better than a lesson read ten times over. This book brings together 171 such tricks, each numbered, divided into nine sections: maths and numbers, spelling, grammar, geography, history, science, arts and music, English, and everyday tips.

From the 9 times table to the planets: six tricks from the book

The 9 times table on your fingers

This is trick number 1 in the book, with a diagram of ten fingers. Lower the finger that matches the number, count the fingers to the left (tens) and to the right (units). For 9 × 3, you read 27 straight away.

“Mais où est donc Ornicar?”

Five words, seven coordinating conjunctions: mais, ou, et, donc, or, ni, car. This is the first trick in the Spelling section.

“Me Voici Tout Mouillé, Je Suis Un Nageur”

The eight planets in order: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. The page notes that Pluto was removed from the list in 2006.

“Kangourou Habile Dansant Merveilleusement Devant Cent Manchots”

The units of length in the correct order: km, hm, dam, m, dm, cm, mm. One step to the right, multiply by 10; one step to the left, divide by 10.

“Petit Âne, Manges-Tu Copieusement?”

The five main periods of history: Prehistory, Antiquity, Middle Ages, Modern Times, Contemporary Era. The timeline in the book gives the key dates: 3300 BC, 476, 1492 and 1789.

“Viens mon chou sur mes genoux jeter des cailloux au hibou plein de poux, avec tes bijoux et tes joujoux!”

One sentence for the seven words ending in -ou that take an x in the plural. All the others take an s, and the page reminds you just below.

88 self-correcting exercises, and diagrams where pictures explain best

At the bottom of each content page, there’s a one-line practice exercise: 88 exercises in total, exactly one per page. All 88 answers are grouped at the end of the book, so children can check their own work. The text speaks directly to them, using “you”, and there’s a subject-by-subject contents page at the start.

This is also, of the three school volumes, the one with the most diagrams: the ten fingers for the 9 times table, the crocodile’s mouth opening towards the bigger number, the compass rose, the timeline of five periods, the eight planets, and the knuckle method for knowing if a month has 30 or 31 days.

An extra section: everyday tips

The ninth section doesn’t follow any curriculum: traffic lights (“red stop, orange wait, green go”), left and right, shoelaces, and a method for learning a lesson in four steps: read, cover, repeat, start again.

And after CM2 (Year 6)

The same method continues: The Big Book of Memory Tricks — Secondary covers 6e to 3e (Year 7 to Year 10), and the Sixth Form version covers 2de to Terminale (Year 11 to Year 13). All titles are gathered in the Memory Tricks collection. This book is also available as a printable PDF version with the same content.

Why a mnemonic trick helps you remember

A child who rereads their lesson ten times rarely knows it better than after three readings. Rereading gives the feeling of knowing, not real memory. What makes you remember is the effort of recalling it yourself, without looking.

A mnemonic trick does exactly that: it gives a hook to hang information on. Three methods come up in this book. Associate something new with something already known. Create a mental image, because visual memory remembers a picture better than a list. And turn a sequence into a phrase you can recite out loud, which also uses auditory memory.

There’s a simple reason for this. Working memory, which handles information in the moment, can only hold a few things at once: an eight-word sentence fits easily, but eight planet names in order, much less so. The trick compresses the list into a single, easy-to-remember object, and that’s what passes into long-term memory.

Then there’s repetition. A trick seen once is forgotten like anything else; seen again the next day, then a week later, it sticks. That’s why there’s an exercise on every content page: it forces you to recall the trick instead of just rereading it.

What this book is not

This isn’t a memory method for adults. You won’t find memory palaces, peg systems, or Cicero’s art of memory: those techniques need long training, and an eight-year-old doesn’t need them. There are no mind maps to build, nor a chapter on how neurons work.

The approach is simpler and more immediate: one ready-made trick per topic, read in thirty seconds, remembered straight away.

Six tricks from the book, just as they appear

The order of the planets. Eight planets orbit the Sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. The phrase to remember is “Me Voici Tout Mouillé, Je Suis Un Nageur”: the first letter of each word gives a planet. The book adds that there used to be nine, but Pluto was removed from the list in 2006 because it’s too small.

Mais où est donc Ornicar? This school phrase hides seven little words: mais, ou, et, donc, or, ni, car. These are conjunctions, the words that link two ideas. “Ornicar” doesn’t exist: it’s a made-up name for the occasion.

Port and starboard. On a boat, you don’t say left and right. Think of the word BATTERY: the “BA” is at the start, so left, and “bâbord” is left. Another clue: “tribord” (starboard) and “droite” (right) both have an “i”.

The 9 times table on your fingers. Both hands flat, ten fingers count from 1 to 10. For 9 × 3, lower the third finger: two fingers left, seven right, the answer is 27.

The big multiplication tables, on your fingers too. Number your fingers from 6 to 10 on each hand. For 8 × 7, touch finger 8 to finger 7: the lower fingers give the tens, five, so 50; the upper fingers multiply, 2 × 3 = 6. Total: 56.

Half as many tables to learn. In multiplication, you can swap the order without changing the result: 3 × 8 = 8 × 3. Three bags of eight marbles or eight bags of three marbles, it’s twenty-four marbles either way. So you only need to remember half the tables.

The other tricks follow the same principle, from the number of vowels in the alphabet (six: a, e, i, o, u and y) to prepositions, and even the colours of the rainbow.

How do you really use it? Our guide primary school memory techniques details what works, with concrete examples and revision mistakes to avoid.