We are down to our very last week in preschool and so since my Pre-Kindergarten age children will be moving on to a new school, we have been taking some time to share some of our favorite memories with each other about preschool…
In the process of sharing our memories, we have been talking about what it is to remember something or someone. Our discussions and activities on the word “remember” or “memory” has taken several twists and turns from defining the word “memory” to playing memory games to creating new memories and celebrating old memories. This little twist on the word “memory” was just one way we had fun exercising our memories..
To make a DIY Memory Box Game Board, I simply hot glued a set of gift boxes to a piece of foam board. I chose to add 12 gift boxes because that is how many I had in my package. I got my set of boxes from the Dollar Tree. The Dollar Tree always sells these boxes during the holidays and sometimes all year round in the birthday party section of their store…
I also added numbers to the lids of each gift box but to be truthful, I don’t know that adding numbers was such a good idea. It has worked out for us but originally I was thinking of this a math game rather than a memory game. I can always get more boxes and put new lids on my game if it really starts to bother me. I use this size of gift box all the time for art and other types of games…
My grandson likes to open all the lids to my DIY memory box game and see what is hidden inside…
However, let me get back to the topic of how we used the DIY Memory Box Game in my pre-kindergarten class. I filled each box on the board with an interesting toy and as a small group, we played a memory game. Â The object of the game was to see if we could remember what was inside each box after taking a look. Â So first we opened each box in numerical order and one at a time to talk about what was inside each box…
We learned a few ways to help us remember which object was in which box along the way too such as creating a rhyme; “A purple crayon is so fun and likes to hide in box number one!’  Or we learned that thinking of a way to play with the object word and number word can help to jog our memory so we can remember what is inside each box like “Six singing birds sat by the seashore.”  Or we learned that we can think of the shape of an object and how it might be similar to the number such as “the purple crayon is a long straight line just like the number one.”…
Now remember, today I am sharing with you how my Pre-Kindergarten class played the memory game and that our discussion was on exercising our memories. Had my threes been in class, we would have simplified and played the game a little differently…
Once we took a look at each item then we put the lids back on and I called a child’s name and asked “Can you remember what was in box number four?” If the child needed a hint, I would repeat one of our rhymes or another hint that would help the child remember what was in the box. Most of the time, the children remembered what was in each box without my help but a few objects were a bit more tricky to remember…
This was just one of many ways we have explored the DIY Memory Box in our classroom. As I mentioned already, with my threes or even with my grandsons, the exploration is adapted to what they would enjoy…
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