| How to Make a Cheap Terrarium Posted: 22 Apr 2019 05:00 PM PDT Making a terrarium can be cheap and easy. If you have a clear glass container, gravel, gardening charcoal, soil, and small plants, you have all the ingredients you need to get started. A terrarium can be as inexpensive to create as the soil and plants you choose. Putting together a terrarium is a quick and affordable way to liven up any indoor space! EditCreating the Base - Reuse a glass jar, bowl, or other clear container for the enclosure. For a cheap terrarium, you can use an old glass jar, an old fishbowl, or even a clear coffee pot! Any container that is clear can work as a terrarium container.[1]
- For a closed terrarium, you'll want to use a container with a sealable lid.
- An old mason jar is a great container to use if you're making your first terrarium.
- For a miniature terrarium, you could use a small jelly jar.
- Wash the container with anti-bacterial soap. After selecting your clear container, you'll want to make sure it's clean. Wash it with an anti-bacterial soap, and then rinse and dry the container thoroughly.[2]
- Layer the container's bottom with gravel from your driveway. Now that your terrarium container is nice and clean, you'll want to fill its bottom with gravel. You can collect this gravel from your driveway or somewhere else outside for free. Make this bottom layer about deep.[3]
- You can substitute sand from the beach for gravel in this step.
- This bottom level of gravel or sand will let water drain away from your plants, which will prevent their roots from rotting.
- Add a thin layer of crushed gardening charcoal. Once you're happy with your bottom layer of gravel or sand, you'll want to add a thin layer of crushed gardening charcoal. You'll want to make this second layer about deep.[4]
- This layer of charcoal will help dampen any unpleasant smells and limit mold.
- Don't use charcoal that is meant for your barbeque. This charcoal has added chemicals and is not recommended for use in gardens.[5]
- Add good quality soil to the top of your charcoal base. Now that you have your base, you can add your soil. You can use soil from your garden or from a dead potted plant. Layer the top of the charcoal with of soil.[6]
- If you're using a smaller container and have plants with shorter roots, you should make your soil layer less deep.
- If there's enough soil to cover your plants' roots, you should be fine.
EditChoosing and Adding Plants - Choose cheap and attractive plants of your choice. You can try planting just about anything in your terrarium, as long as it's small and won't grow too much. Wild strawberries, violets, small ferns, and other plants that grow well in forest shade are popular options.[7]
- For a closed terrarium, you'll want to choose plants that do well in a humid, moist environment, like fern, moss, and orchids.[8]
- You should choose plants that require drier conditions for an open terrarium, like succulents and cacti.[9]
- Decide where you want to put your plants. In the soil, mark where you want each of your plants to be. Then, gently carve a valley where you plan to put each plant.[10]
- Make sure you leave space between plants so that they have enough room to grow.
- Gently remove plants from their containers. Gently take your plants out of their original pots. Try to remove as much of the potting soil from the plant as possible. Leave just the soil that is directly touching the roots.[11]
- Be careful not to damage the roots as you take out your plants.
- Position 1 plant in each hole. Next, you'll want to put your plants in the valleys you dug in the layer of soil. Cover the roots with soil, and pack soil around the plants.[12]
- You'll want to make sure your plants are stable and can stand up on their own.
EditIncluding Low-Cost Accessories - Look outside for interesting stones to add to your terrarium. Now that you've finished putting in your plants, it is time to add the landscaping. Small stones are a classic aspect used in most terrarium landscapes, and you can find them for free just about anywhere.
- The shore of a lake, river, or another body of water is an excellent place to find stones in a variety of shapes and colors.[13]
- Take moss from a nearby rock or tree and add it to your terrarium. Many terrarium builders use moss to dress the surface of their closed terrariums. Most gardening stores sell moss, but if you'd like to spend even less money on your moss-covered terrarium, why not just head outside and get some for free?[14]
- You can use a trowel to scrape some off a tree, rock, or the ground.
- Go into your backyard or local park and collect twigs. Your backyard or local park is a perfect place to find natural goodies to decorate your terrarium. You'll be surprised how much variety there is just outside your door.[15]
- Pinecones, acorns, and bark are other materials you might consider adding to your terrarium's landscape.
- If you live near an ocean, you could head to the beach and collect shells to use for decoration.
- Add any miniature figurines and other trinkets you have lying around. Adding a figurine or trinket to the inside of your terrarium will give it a unique character. You can choose just about anything to put in your terrarium.[16]
- Add a small animal figurine, miniature statue, colorful marbles, or anything else that catches your eye would work well.
- Care for your terrarium with water and indirect sunlight. Terrariums are very low maintenance. Add a little water and place your terrarium in a location will it will receive indirect sunlight.[17]
- A closed terrarium should flourish without watering, but you may need to help out your plants with an occasional misting.[18]
- Be careful not to overwater your open terrarium. You'll need to add water only when the soil gets dry.
EditThings You'll Need - Clear container
- A small bag of gardening charcoal (available at gardening stores)
- A small bag of gardening soil
- Gravel or sand
- Various plants
- Decorations of your choice
- Watering can
- Anti-bacterial soap
EditReferences
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| How to Celebrate Earth Day Posted: 22 Apr 2019 09:00 AM PDT The celebration of Earth Day is on April 22, and it began in 1970. Since then, it has grown into a global event recognized by over 192 countries. Devoting a special day to helping the earth is a way to demonstrate how much we care about the future of our planet. No matter what you like to do best, there's a way to get involved in Earth Day. You could spend time in nature to deepen your appreciation still further. You can plant a tree, make a meal with locally-grown vegetables, educate a family member, friend, neighbor, co-worker, or member of your faith community, clean up trash in your neighborhood, set up a bird feeder, reduce your use of electricity, and find other ways to get around that use no or much less fuel. The possibilities are endless. Use Earth Day to appreciate what you and others are already doing and to explore what you may do further today and throughout the coming year to help heal this planet that is our home. EditGetting Engaged - Learn more about the environment. Earth Day is a good time to make a commitment to learning more about the environment and how you can help to protect it. Read articles to get up to date on the current issues affecting the environment, like pollution, water shortages, and climate change. Or, learn about a region you've never considered before, like the Arctic, the deserts, or the rain forests. Not sure where to start? Check out your local news sources for information about environmental issues in your own backyard.
- Understand how climate change works, and what you can do about it.[1]
- If you live in a city, look into urban environmental issues like contaminated drinking water and energy conservation.[2]
- If you live near a body of water, do research to find out whether it's healthy or in need of help.[3]
- Learn more about fracking, which is affecting many communities in the United States.[4]
- Find out which species native to your area are under threat of extinction.[5]
- Join an environmental group. Think about the issues that concern you the most and if you haven't done so already, join a local group that undertakes activities to help protect the environment in your area. Earth Day is a great day to start getting involved. In almost any community, you'll find local groups that do the following:[6]
- Host clean-ups of local bodies of water and their shores
- Fight air and water pollution
- Plant trees and install community gardens
- Protect habitats under threat of getting developed
- Can't find a group? Consider starting your own.
- Spread the word. Everyone has environmental knowledge they can share with others. Just talking about the environment with people who may not think about it that much is a good way to celebrate Earth Day. Talk to your parents, friends, teachers, siblings, and anyone else you'd like about the issues you care about most. Here are a few ways to educate others about the earth:
- Give a speech at your local library on how to compost with worms
- Take a group of children down to the recycling center to show them how things are recycled
- Recite nature poems in the park
- Offer to teach your office colleagues how to make environmentally-friendly choices at work during lunch hour
- Encourage people to respond and if they have no opinions or they seem to not know much, help them learn some more by imparting your environmental knowledge in a friendly and helpful manner.
- Get a group of friends to wear green and brown. When people ask you why you're dressed like a tree, take the opportunity to talk about Earth Day.
- Go to an Earth Day fair. Maybe your school, your street, or your local neighborhood is holding an environmental fair. If your community doesn't have one planned, consider starting one yourself. It's the perfect day to get together for a fun and educational celebration of the earth. Money raised can go towards a local environmental restoration project or to an environmental group agreed upon by all the participants running the fair. These offerings are common at Earth Day fairs:
- Demonstrations of environmentally-friendly products
- Children's earth-themed artwork
- Healthy/locally grown foods to eat
- Animal care demonstrations (including wildlife rescue)
- Games for the children made of recycled products
- Musicians and actors performing environmental music and skits
- Stalls for recycling unwanted treasures and books
- Local environmental organizations presenting their issues and wares.
- Enjoy Earth Day entertainment. There are many Earth Day song lyrics available on the Internet. Most follow well-known tunes so people can easily sing along. These make a fantastic classroom activity and help younger children to become interested in environmental topics. iTunes has many songs about the Earth for downloading: try searching for words such as "planet," "Earth," "endangered," "pollution" etc.
- Cook a special Earth Day meal. Invite friends and family over for a meal, and plan a menu that uses locally produced foods, is healthy and has minimal impact on the environment. Favor vegetables, fruit, and other produce, as these use fewer resources to grow than mass-farmed meat. If you still would like meat, look for locally produced, organic meat. Try to have organic food completely.
- To decorate for the meal, use recycled decorations made by you and your friends instead of buying brand-new decorations.
- When you wash up after the meal, use the low-water dishwashing method. Teach those who are helping how to use it, too.
- Remember that every day is Earth Day. Anything to help our environment is a perfect thing to do on Earth Day and every day. Don't restrict yourself to just one day a year; learn about how you can make a difference to environmental protection all the time. It's going to take a lot of work to heal our planet. Leading by example will help others remember that the earth is important every day of the year.
EditCaring for Trees, Plants and Animals - Plant trees. As the date of Earth Day roughly coincides with U.S. Arbor Day, planting trees is a popular Earth Day activity. Trees help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, clean pollution, secure soil in place to prevent erosion and provide homes for many birds, insects, and other animals. There's almost no more important, long-lasting act you can do to celebrate Earth Day.
- Pick a tree that you know can survive in your climate. It's best to find a species native to where you live. If you're unsure about what that might be, ask an employee at your local garden shop, or inside the garden department of a big-box store.
- To ensure that the tree grows tall and strong, make sure you plant it correctly. Choose the correct planting spot to meet its needs, dig a properly-sized hole, and water the tree well to give it a good start.
- Plant wildflowers. Choose flowers that are native to your area and plant them in your garden or on nature strips where plants are usually grown. Restoring the local plant life will help attract native bird life, pollinators, and local mammals. Here are a few examples of common flowers that will draw wildlife:
- If you want to attract Monarch butterflies, plant milkweed, pansies or goldenrod.[7]
- If you want to attract bees, plant bee balm, lavender or sage.
- If you want to attract hummingbirds, plant foxglove, petunias or lilies.[8]
- Welcome animals into your yard. You can do a lot for the creatures of the earth starting in your own yard or neighborhood. In their quest for the perfect lawn, many people drive out the insects, rodents, birds, and reptiles that need a place to call home just as much as we do. Starting on Earth Day, why not welcome these nonhuman neighbors into your yard? Here's how to do it.
- Instead of mowing the entire yard, leave a few sections unmowed. Bees, butterflies, and many other insects will find this inviting. If you're worried about them coming inside, have the unmowed area in the back of the yard instead of right next to the house.
- Install a bird feeder, bat feeder, squirrel feeder, hummingbird feeder, or any other type of feeder to attract more wild animals.
- Provide a source of water, like a birdbath or a small pond.
- Don't try to get rid of snakes, lizards, frogs, moles, squirrels, and the other creatures who want to hang out in your yard. Many of these animals are beneficial; they aerate your yard, eat mosquitoes and improve biodiversity in the area. Live and let live. Tell your neighbors to do the same!
- Talk to your neighbors about going organic. Pesticides and herbicides can harm wild animals, native plants, trees, pets, and even humans. Make Earth Day the day you stop using chemicals in your yard and try organic methods of weed and pest removal instead. Consider talking to your neighbors about making the whole neighborhood organic.
- Getting rid of pests the old-fashioned way can actually be more effective than using pesticides. Try planting native plants to control the insect population. Use water to spray common insects like aphids off of your vegetable plants.
- When it comes to weeds, pulling them out by hand works better than any other method.
- Commit to protecting local wild places. Whether you live near an ocean, river, forest, mountain, swamp or lake, wild areas like these need protection. They are home to many plants and animals who rely on them for food and shelter. On Earth Day, commit to protecting the wild places in your community by doing the following:
- Join a group working to protect these areas from pollution and developments.
- Encourage people to respect wild spaces by not damaging animal habitats, littering, and dumping in the water.
- Clean up litter in your community. Many groups use the weekend of Earth Day to clear roadways, highways and neighborhood streets of litter that has accumulated since the last clean-up day.[9] Many companies donate gloves and bags for clean-up groups, and villages organize bag pickups. Once the group has collected the trash and placed the recycled bags along the road, get the village public works department to pick the bags up. It's a wonderful community project that you can do as an individual or with a group.
EditEating Earth-Friendly Food - Eat food from local sources. Eating food that was grown or raised as close to your home as possible is important for a variety of reasons. Locally-grown food doesn't require as much gas to arrive in your town and end up on the shelves in your grocery store. The closer to your home it was grown, the more environmentally friendly it is.[10]
- Farmer's markets are a great place to find local foods. Most foods available in farmer's markets were grown within a 50-mile vicinity.
- Some grocery stores have a section devoted to locally-grown foods. Look for foods that were produced in your state, or better yet, within 50 miles of your town.
- Look for foods that were produced on small farms, rather than manufactured at factories.
- Plant a vegetable garden. When it comes to eating local, you can't get much closer to home than your own yard. You can grow a lot of different vegetables in a relatively small space. Earth Day falls during the perfect time of year to plant a garden. Try clearing a bit of grass away and planting a few different varieties to try out during the summer.
- Squash is a great choice, since one plant produces enough to feed a small family for several weeks.
- Tomatoes is popular among novice gardeners.
- Beans are relatively low-maintenance.
- Herbs take up very little room and can be grown in pots.
- Don't have space for a garden? See if there's a community garden in your area where you can start using a plot.
- Consider a vegetarian or vegan diet. Most meat is manufactured in an industrial setting under conditions that pollute the environment and are cruel to the animals.[11]Mass-produced meat is normally pumped full of hormones, making it unhealthy for humans to consume. Eliminating meat from your diet is considered a great way to do your part to help the environment. Why not make April 22 your first meatless day?
- A vegetarian diet is free of meat and fish, while a vegan diet is free of all animal products (including eggs, honey, and dairy products). Choose the diet that works best for your health needs.
- If you don't want to give up meat entirely, consider buying your meat products only from local farms where you know how the animals were treated. Look for farms that allow animals space to roam and feed them healthy food.[12]
- Cook from scratch. Pre-made, processed foods require preservatives and a lot of packaging to keep them from going bad before you eat them. Check out the list of ingredients on items like frozen dinners, packaged snack foods, and other common grocery store items. They likely contain extra sugars, chemical flavorings and other ingredients that aren't good for the environment or our bodies. The solution is to buy foods in their natural form and cook from scratch.
- Even if a product is labeled "natural," check the ingredients. If you see words you can't pronounce, you probably don't need to eat it.
- Not sure you know how to cook from scratch? Start with easy dishes like omelets, casseroles, smoothies, or steamed vegetables. Once you learn some basic techniques, you'll be able to cook more and more dishes from scratch.
EditReducing Waste - Reduce, reuse and recycle. Buy as little as possible and avoid items that come in lots of packaging. Start good habits on Earth Day and carry them through all year long. Here are a few ways you can reduce, reuse and recycle:
- Support local growers and producers of food and products. These don't have to travel as far and so reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
- Take your drink container with you, and don't use any disposable plates or cutlery. Recycle all the things you do use for the day or find other uses for things that you no longer use.
- Carry a cloth bag for carrying things in and recycle your plastic bags.
- Buy or make Earth-friendly cleaning products. Try making up a simple vinegar-and-water counter cleaner, or swapping out your bleach cleaner for a less-toxic orange-based one. Making your own cleaning products saves money and packaging. Homemade cleaning products also often work just as well as of industrial-strength chemicals.
- A solution of half vinegar, half water can be used to clean floors, bathrooms, cabinets, counters, and just about anything else in your home.
- To remove stains from carpeting, clothing or other fabrics, make a paste with baking soda and water. Let it sit on the stain for a few minutes, then scrub it away with a toothbrush.
- Entertain kids with homemade crafts and toys. Instead of using store-bought toys, help kids appreciate the beauty of reusing something old to make it fun and new. Tell kids to get creative and come up with their own ideas for how to make something around the house into a toy. Here are a few ideas:
- Sell or donate used items instead of throwing them away. Hold a garage sale, donate, or reuse household items. Many of us take up a lot of natural resources with stuff we don't really need, want or use. Ironically, there's a still lot of people who don't have basic necessities. Plus, a lot of your unwanted clutter can be used by local charities to resell for much-needed cash.
- Another idea is to hold a clothing swap. This can be a fun, free way for friends, relatives, co-workers, neighbors, and the like to find new wardrobe finds. (You can combine with an Earth Day lunch or dinner, too!)
- Learn about product exchange communities like Freecycle and other alternatives.
- Start a compost bin.[13] Instead of throwing out your food scraps, turn them into the soil for your garden. This process is called composting. Banana peels, egg shells, carrot tops and avocado skins don't belong in the trash, where they'll just end up in a landfill. To start composting,
- Collect all of your food scraps (except for meat and dairy products) in a closed bin.
- Add leaves, sticks, grass clippings and other organic items to the mix.
- Turn the mixture every few days using a pitchfork.
- The compost will break down into a rich, brown soil after several months of turning.
EditSaving Energy and Water - Consider buying a carbon offset. This is designed to make up for the greenhouse gas emissions you create on the other 364 days of the year.[14] Carbon offsets fund reductions in greenhouse gas emissions through projects such as wind farms, that displaces energy from fossil fuels.
- Ride your bike. Use your bicycle or other forms of human powered transportation to commute to work or school and to run errands. This is a lot more environmentally friendly than relying on cars to get wherever you're going.
- If your school or work is too far to bike, look for a form of public transportation you can take. A bus, train or shuttle is better for the environment than driving alone in your car.
- Or consider carpooling with a few friends who are going in the same direction.
- Conserve water in your house. Do you tend to use more water than you need while going about your daily chores and business? There are little things you can do that make a big difference in how much water you use. Plus, conserving water will keep your water bill down.[15] Try adopting these habits:
- While brushing your teeth or washing your hands, turn the water off when not in use. Turn the water off when you are brushing.
- If you are washing your hands, turn the water off when you are scrubbing your hands with soap.
- Take shorter showers every day from Earth Day on.
- Install a greywater system in your home. Recycle water from the house for the garden.
- Wash your car using a bucket rather than the hose. Drive the car onto the grass for cleaning, so that the water you do use also waters the grass.
- Save electricity. It's one of the first ways many of us are taught to be environmentally friendly, yet we all need help remembering how important it is to do things like turn off the lights when you leave the room. There are many ways you can save more electricity on a daily basis:[16]
- Vow to use less air conditioning in the summer, and less heat in the winter.
- Turn off all appliances and electronics when you aren't using them.
- Use energy-saving light bulbs or install skylights on your house's roof. You could also make mason jar luminaries as well.
- Switch to low-energy appliances.
- Search the Internet for many more ideas. Earth Day is celebrated in many different ways. An excellent way to find more information is to surf the internet and look at what other people have done. There is so much there that it cannot be replicated here!
- Simple things, such as asking young children to use less paper to dry their hands or asking colleagues to turn the lights off when they leave the office at night are great "small starters" to encourage bigger changes. You don't need to feel that you haven't time to contribute; every little changed habit that benefits the environment adds up, and you are setting a good example to others.
- The other Earth Day is celebrated usually on March 21, which is the equinox for spring in the Northern Hemisphere and for autumn in the Southern Hemisphere. This Earth Day is supported by the United Nations, and the Japanese Peace Bell is rung at the New York United Nations to remind everyone of our place in the human family on our precious planet Earth. See International Earth Day Official Site for further information.
- Celebrating World Oceans Day is another opportunity to show that you care for the health of our environment.
- Promoting world peace is a strongly related goal for environmentalists. Peace means that nations can focus on environmental issues rather than on war. Celebrate International Day of Peace for a good start in this direction.
- Cleaning up part of your local area can be a great way to celebrate Earth Day, but make sure all participants are properly attired or outfitted. Gloves are an absolute must, and if you are collecting litter, sticks with prongs for picking it up are useful. Warn participants to be careful of sticking their fingers into dark places where biting animals might reside and be careful of syringes and other dangerous items.
EditRelated wikiHows EditReferences EditQuick Summary
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| How to Memorize a Speech Posted: 22 Apr 2019 01:00 AM PDT Memorizing a speech for a class, work presentation, or another affair can be an intimidating task for some people. Fortunately, whether you're memorizing a long soliloquy or a short report, there are multiple methods you can use for memorizing your speech. The visualization technique is best for memorizing the main ideas of your speech, while the chunk method is best for memorizing a speech verbatim. EditChunking Your Speech - Write out the entire speech and read it out loud. To cement the speech in your head, you need to write it out in its complete form. This includes the introduction, body, and conclusion of the speech. Reading the speech aloud will also allow you to hear how it sounds thematically, as well as keep more of your senses engaged in the memorization process.[1]
- You should write out the entire speech even if you do not plan on memorizing it verbatim. The point is not to memorize it right now, but to get a sense of how the speech reads and flows.
- If at all possible, try to read the speech in the place you will deliver it. The acoustics of every room and setting vary somewhat, so reading your speech in the actual delivery location can help you get accustomed to the way your voice will sound from that spot. Additionally, it helps you get comfortable with the layout of the room, making it possible for you to rehearse your movements as well as your words.
- Split the speech into short chunks that are 2-3 sentences long. The chunks can be sentences that are on the same topic or they can be organized based on how difficult they are for you to remember. The goal should be for you to know which parts of the speech you need to work on memorizing the most.[2]
- Take the time to actually mark off each section or chunk of information in your written notes. This can make it easier for you to recall when one part ended and when the next part picks up as you practice, making it harder for you to accidentally forget or leave any parts out.
- Practice the first chunk of your speech until you can fully recall it. Practice reciting this first chunk of information out loud while referring to your notes as little as possible. Once you're able to recite the entire chunk without having to look at your notes at all, consider this chunk memorized.[3]
- If you get stuck, do not immediately return to your notes. Start from the beginning and try to say the chunk again. If this fails, spend a few more moments trying to recall the missing information. When you decide that nothing can help you remember it, return to your notes and briefly look up what the missing part consisted of.
- When you finish memorizing a chunk of your speech, read through it again to verify that you have it correct.
- Add more and more chunks to your recall. Once you finish recalling the first chunk successfully, add a second chunk to it, repeating both until the second chunk can be recited from memory, as well. Be sure to memorize chunks that appear sequentially in your speech, since this is the order that you'll have to recall them in later on.[4]
- It is important that you continue repeating previously memorize chunks so that you do not forget them. Moreover, repeating all chunks of your speech together will help you to memorize how each chunk fits together with the rest.
- Continue this process until you've memorized the whole speech. Continue practicing your speech out loud without looking at your notes. If you have trouble remembering a certain chunk, isolate it and focus on recalling it from memory before trying to weave it back into the speech as a whole.[5]
- Regardless of which memorization tactics you use and how effective they are, the most valuable thing you can do for yourself is to practice the speech as often as possible.
- Practice your speech from memory as best as possible. You can refer to your notes when you get stuck but deliver as much as possible without your notes.
- Try to practice your speech from memory for at least half of your practices, if not more.
EditUsing the Visualization Technique - Write an outline of the speech using bullet points instead of sentences. This type of outline will touch on all the major parts of your speech, making it easier for you to divide it into manageable parts. Use bullet points that describe the main themes of each section of your speech, as well as any smaller themes or points within these sections.[6]
- For instance, instead of writing "When I was a child, I was attacked by a dog. It was a mean old dog that belonged to my neighbor at the time. Ever since then, I've been afraid of dogs," simply write "dog attack story."
- Writing your outline this way will prevent you from memorizing the exact words you intend to use in your speech, which would make you sound robotic instead of natural.
- Your outline should include all major ideas and all major supporting ideas. If you have any special examples or analogies you want to use within your speech, these also warrant bullet points.
- Divide the speech into distinct sections based on your outline. Each main idea or major supporting detail that was written as a bullet point in your outline should be considered a distinct section. If you have multiple bullet points that are very similar to each other, these can also be lumped together into a single section.[7]
- For example, if 1 bullet point reads "my semester abroad in China" and the next bullet reads "attending a Chinese school," these can be combined into a single section called "my experiences in China."
- These sections should logically flow into each other in a comfortable narrative format. Think of them as the different acts in a story you're telling the audience.
- If you did not write an outline or do not like the way your information is organized into bullet points on the outline, you could opt to divide your speech by paragraph instead of by bullet point. The idea is mostly to assign one major idea to each part.
- Visualize a mental image for each section of your speech. Choose an image that is related to the theme of the speech section, but which is also a little bit odd or off the wall. The more absurd and unique the image is, the easier it will be to recall it later.[8]
- For instance, if a part of your speech mentions that coconut oil can help hair grow faster, you could imagine something like Rapunzel sitting on top of a tower made of coconuts or living in a room filled with coconuts. Rapunzel emphasizes the idea of long hair, while the coconuts help point out the connection to coconut oil.
- Assign each of these images a location in your home. Pick out areas of your home, such as the kitchen sink, your work desk, or the top of the coffee table, and match these areas to the sections of your speech. They don't necessarily have to be related to the theme of the speech section; each section just needs to be attached to a location.[9]
- For example, the section of your speech on your experiences abroad can be assigned to your bathroom sink if you like.
- You can choose another location besides your home if you like, such as your office or the road you drive on to get to work. The location can be near or far; the choice is up to you. Ultimately, though, you should be able to navigate it well enough in your mind to find your way to your various visuals.
- Alternatively, you could also use the human body as a map. The images can be "tattooed" onto the body in your mind, and as you travel along the body, you will hit the images in order more naturally.
- Practice linking the visuals together to recall your speech. With the locations and visualizations set, you need to begin practicing your speech by relying on these visuals for guidance. As you practice, actually imagine yourself traveling from location to location, viewing each image in the order that its corresponding bullet point falls within your speech.[10]
- Construct narrative links between each mental image. For example, if your visual for the dog attack story was a bandaid and your visual for your experiences in China was a dumpling, imagine yourself putting a bandaid on in the bathroom, then walking into the kitchen to find a dumpling on the counter.
- You need to have firm links connecting one visualization to the next. If not, you might forget the order your information is supposed to land in.
EditEmploying Other Methods - Record yourself reciting the speech, if possible. While writing and speaking your speech are the 2 most important practices involved in memorizing the speech, recording the speech and playing it back for yourself can also help. This also gives you a chance to see how you actually look and sound when reciting your speech, which is also important![11]
- Use this recording to listen to your speech when you do not have the chance to practice it out loud. You can play it for yourself in the car or play it as you fall asleep, for example.
- Engage your other senses as much as you can. If certain keywords bring to mind particular sounds, smells, tastes, or touches, weave those imagined sensations into the visualization process or recall of your speech. Mental images are often the strongest sense to rely on for memory, but these other senses can still help significantly.[12]
- For instance, if you say that a certain historical event really made a bang or made a splash, you can imagine the sound of a loud bang or the sound and feeling of something heavy dropping into water.
- Create an acronym if your speech includes a list. An acronym uses the first letter of each item in the list to create a sentence or word, which can then be used to recall those first letters. The sentence or word doesn't have to be thematically related to the list, so long as you remember it![13]
- For example, you can use the acronym HOMES to recall the names of the Great Lakes in the U.S., H for Huron, O for Ontario, M for Michigan, E for Erie, and S for Superior.
- Memorizing the introduction of your speech can be a good idea because knowing precisely what to say at the beginning of a speech can help calm you down and ease you into the setting.
- Memorizing the conclusion is also helpful because it prevents you from accidentally falling into a concluding loop, in which you continually repeat information as you try to close.
- Don't wait until the last minute to memorize your speech. It'll be much easier to memorize when you have several days to do so instead of a few hours.
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