10 Playful Ways to Improve Memory in Children

3 to 7 years

Created by Shikha Batra
Updated on Jul 28, 2017

10 Playful Ways to Improve Memory in Children

Between Maths, Science, Social Studies, and play, there are a lot of things your little one needs to remember. Add to it the continuous stimulus they receive from the environment all the time...no wonder, sometimes children’s memory max out and they draw a blank even at simple questions such as “what happened in school today”.

How to Boost Child’s Memory

Here, we get you 10 tips on how to help boost your children’s memory, but in a playful way.

#1. Using Playcards: Give instructions to the child using playcards with a different shape on each with each shape indicating an action to be performed by the child. For example, when he sees a circle he has to raise his arms high up in the air, when he sees a square he has to clap his hands once, when he sees a triangle, he has to take his right arm to his chest in a fist. Now, ask him to make the movement that goes with the shape one by one followed by a repeated series. You can change the order of placards in series each time to make it more complicated.

#2. Using Child’s Magazine: Give your child a child’s magazine and give him directions to go to a particular page number mentioned by you and underline all instances of the word “a” in one minute.

#3. Play games in the car in which you recite the letters and numbers on a number plate you see on a car passing by and then say it backwards too. Take turns.

#4. Simple play cards games like Crazy Eights, Matching Needs, Uno, Go Fish, and War can be excellent ways to improve child’s working memory as the child has to keep the rules of the game in mind besides remembering what card he has and which ones others have played. Even board games such as chess can help boost concentration and memory skills of the child.

#5. Ask the child to think of as many animals and name them and making it further complicated by thinking of animals beginning with letter “B”. Names of flowers, birds, insects or his classmates/family members beginning with a particular letter can also be used to play the game.

#6. You can ask your child to name as many clue words for addition as she can (such as “all together”, “in all”, “total” and “plus”). Synonyms of a word or opposites can also be asked.

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#7. Depending on the age of your child, you can give three or four or five directions simultaeously by numbering them. For example: One- ‘Go to the last room, find a pink towel there’, Two- ‘Go to the study room, wrap the pink towel on the pen stand’, Three- ‘Pick up a notepad from study table and a pencil.’ Four- ‘Bring it to me, write “One” on the notepad and give it to me’. Each time increase the complexity of the instructions given.

#8. A collection of around 20 small items, for example Pencils, small value coins, purses, fake spiders, tiny teddies, lipstick, plastic toys etc. is placed in a tray. Time limit of about one minute is given to the child to look at the items before they are covered or removed. The child is then asked to write down or say aloud everything from the tray that they can remember. This can be played with words, numbers or letters sequence also.

#9. This memory game can be played between minimum of 2 and maximum of 6 children where the first one would begin a sentence with a location, a situation and items required. For example, the first person could say “I went to school to attend a fun fair with a bag full of sweets”. The next person would need to repeat the sentence, including the first person’s item, and then add their own to start a list. The next person can say “I went to school to attend a fun fair with a bag full of sweets (first person’s sentence) and pencils (his own addition to the list)”. As the game goes on, each participant needs to recall the full list and add their own, and if they can’t, they will out of that round.

#10. Storytelling is another way to improve working memory as it requires and invites a child’s sustained and focused attention as well as working memory to hold in mind all that’s happened so far, different characters’ identities, story details and to relate them to the new information being revealed (without the use of visual aids).

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I would request my readers to enrich this blog with the innovative techniques they have been using to improve the memory of their child. Your feedback is valuable to me.

Thanks for reading!