So, you need to remember all of the polygon prefixes by 8 AM tomorrow, but you can’t remember the difference between a pentagon and a heptagon. Bummer. What’s a kid to do? Have you tried MNEMONICS? No, not Satan worship…that another blog all together! I am talking using a form of word association to connect those pesky prefixes to the numbers they represent. Most students will know how many sides a TRIangle has. But how many sides does a nonagon have? The nonagon has NINE sides. To help you remember that Nona means nine, make up a story about nona…Nona could be your crazy Aunt Nona who has nine fingers or, you could use the fact that Nona and Nine both start with N. The point is, find a story that you can remember that will firmly associate the prefix and the number.
Here are some of my favorite associations if you get stuck….
Triangle : Tri=3 : Tricycle, Trident has 3 points (think Little Mermaid)
Quadrangle: Quad=4: Quad at a school has 4 walls, there is an ATV called a Quad with 4 wheels.
Pentagon: Penta=5: There are 5 letters in Penta, there are 5 points on a star named Penta.
Hexagon: Hex=6: SIX and HEX both end in X, both have 3 letters
Heptagon: Hepta=7:
Octagon: Oct=8 – octopus…
Nonagon: Nona=9: see story above
Decagon: Deca=10 : a ‘deck of’ 10 cards
Undecagon: Undeca=11: Think UN is like 1 and DECA is 10 so 10+1=11
Dodecagon: Dodeca=12: DOS (Spanish 2) + DECA (10)=12
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