The other day I posted the rhyme for helping remember the number of days in each month. Interestingly, one friend from France and another friend who was born in Hong Kong mentioned a knuckle trick for remembering. There are different versions of the knuckle trick, but evidently it’s used around the world.
You can see in the diagram above one way of doing the knuckle trick. Make two fists. Then, starting with January, name the months putting January below the knuckle, then February above the the knuckle… move down your fists alternating months above and below each knuckle. All of the months on the bottom of the knuckles will have 31 days (in red in the diagram) and all of the months above the knuckles will have either 30 days, or in the case of February 28 or 29 days.
Many thanks to Ray Lee for mentioning the fist trick and to Monique Palomares for teaching her version and for making the diagram above.
May you always know the number of days in the months!
Mama Lisa
Note: Since I posted this another friend from France and one from Poland told me they use this trick too.
This article was posted on Tuesday, February 1st, 2011 at 11:20 am and is filed under Learning, Tricks for Learning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
3 Responses to “A Knuckle Trick to Remember the Number of Days in Each Month”
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November 15th, 2011 at 10:12 pm
Brasil also, but it’s one hand and you repeat the knuckle, july/august and return…
May 14th, 2023 at 8:26 pm
Well you asked for it….. when you said “May you always know the number of days in the months!”
Remember the 12 letter word “Unifoliolate” it was the first word I found starts with vowel ends in a vowel has two vowels together and 7 vowel in with the other vowels that matches the months with 31 days in it.
Am I nuts, will you be the first website to have the “Vowel method”
By the way you will have to add this real word to your dictionary
May 14th, 2023 at 9:22 pm
I found another word on page 2 Editorialise that has a vowel that lines up with the months that has 31 days in it