The Kingdom of Gallon is one of the most popular sections in my best-selling book Memory Tips for Math. The reason it’s so popular is because parents and teachers find it is the best mnemonic for learning liquid measurement. It uses a story method and the student draws the components while listening to the story. I’ve had parents tell me they use it to remember how many cups in a quart. Learning liquid measurement is imperative in our world. We use it constantly. Let’s start our kids off right and maybe we can use a little refreshing too.

The brain remembers things using pictures and associations. This is why The Kingdom of Gallon, with it’s story and pictures, works well, helping children who are learning liquid measurement.

It’s important to teach not only “how many quarts in a gallon”, but to demonstrate using familiar items, like a quart and a gallon container for milk. There are teaching suggestions at the bottom of each page.

Keep student’s learning styles in mind, too. Let your kinesthetic learners get involved with the actual measuring. Your audio learners can retell the story aloud to the class and the visual learners need plenty of time while drawing each step.

As you teach the story, observe students, to make sure they are drawing the gallon large enough to fit all the other symbols on the paper. Use a different color for the G (gallon), Q (quart), P(pint) and C(cup).

When it comes time for testing, instruct students to draw the mnemonic device on their scrap paper, if needed, and answer the capacity conversion questions correctly.

I’ve recently made it available as a separate downloadable e-book (Kingdom of Gallon) with lots of detailed step-by-step instructions. It works much better than other liquid measurement mnemonics, because of the story. You will be amazed at how quickly cups, pints, quarts, half -gallons and gallons are remembered in story form. This 14-page e-book is colorful, with reproducible pages and worksheets. And best of all, it has a special offer hidden inside!