See field notes about this activity

Name of Activity:. REMEMBER ONE, REMEMBER TWO, REMEMBER THREE

Category:. Me and My World

Props: A tray and at least ten objects that are familiar to your child, like a crayon, a doll, a block, a book, a truck, etc. (One variation of this activity is to provide ten objects that are similar, such as ten crayons of different colors, or ten cars of different colors and sizes)

Your Role: travel guide and historian

Ask the child to turn around or go to another place in the room and "develop" the photo in his or her head, or to try to remember the three objects. Remove the three objects from the tray and place those three objects among ten other objects on the floor of the room. Ask your child to return and have him or her place the three objects that used to be on the tray, back on the tray. Remember, this is not a guessing game. You must encourage your child to remember from his mind what was on the tray.

Goals for You: Your job is to help your child focus, attend to detail , and develop a good ability to recall, all important skills in school and in life in general.

Goals for Children: This activity should also be fun and challenging for childlren. If you set this up as a fun task, your child needn't feel pressured. Ideally, your child should learn to value having a good memory and good matching and ordering skills.

Possible Strategy:

What to say "Today I'm going to ask that your brain take a picture of what you're looking at. I'd like you to pay close attention to these three objects, remember them, and then pick them out of a bunch of other objects. If thinking of yourself as a camera doesn't work for you, that's okay. What's most important is for you to really try to look and remember."

What to do When you first start to play this activity, try to choose three objects that are very different from one another and different from the objects in which you place them. You may select a doll, a truck, and an apple and return them to seven very different sorts of objects. Later on you can be more subtle--showing your child three pieces of replica food and then returning the three to other replica food. Or, selecting three different objects that are all yellow and returning them to objects that are predominately yellow.

Possible Shaping:

What to say "Look at these objects. Can you find the three that you saw before? Really try to remember."

What to do: Encourage your child to try to find the objects. Focus on details of how the objects are both like and unlike each other.

Possible Ending:

What to say: "Great job! Next time I'm going to give you three objects that are more alike. But you are such a good camera brain person that I'll bet you can find them."

What to do: Place the objects and tray away with gusto!

Material on this site created by Helane S. Rosenberg, Ph.D. and Yakov M. Epstein, Ph.D. in conjunction with their forthcoming book titled Play for Success. All material on this site is copyrighted and may not be reproduced or cited without written permission of Helane S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.. Dr. Rosenberg is Associate Professor of Education at the Graduate School of Education of Rutgers-The State University, New Brunswick, NJ. Dr. Epstein is Professor of Psychology in the Faculty of Arts and Science of Rutgers-The State University, New Brunswick, NJ. He is also Director of the Center for Mathematics, Science, and Computer Education of Rutgers University.

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