We all know that children love running around and using up some of the endless amounts of energy that they seem to have however sometimes after a busy morning it is nice to have some down quiet play time. Now, quiet time doesn’t necessarily mean boring time and playing memory games is can be a fun way to spend the afternoon and learn some important skills.
Memory games are fantastic for boosting children’s memories and can help with improving concentration and cognitive skills, training visual memory and the visual senses. Added to this it can help your child learn to keep focus which is hugely beneficial once they start school.
We are lucky enough to have two sets of memory games that we received as gifts that we regularly make use of. What is nice about these is that I can use as few or as many pairs as I like and add or subtract as my little ones dictate. I usually start with three pairs for my 2 year old and six sets for my 4 year old and go from there.
The children love playing with the memory cards and I can usually keep them busy for about 30 minutes or so before they start to lose interest. From there we start making things like card houses and tents with the cards, which isn’t exactly what they were designed for but it keeps them happy and quiet so who am I to argue.
If you don’t have any ready-made memory games you can still play this game with your children. Print out some royalty free stock images (2 of each kind) and glue them to some card and let your children play with these. You could even use coloured card glued to plain card so that your little ones match the colours (this could then double up as a way of teaching them colours).
Alternatively there are some great online memory games and apps out there for when you are on the move. One of the nice things about the memory games and apps that are available is that they are graded so you have different skills levels depending on the age of your children.