Tray Game

• Place 10 household items on a tray. Objects such as cups, pens, keys, books or coins are all suitable. Give the children one minute to look at the tray, then ask them to cover their eyes. Remove an item. Ask the children to look again and say what is missing. To make the game more challenging, add more items or cover the tray with a cloth and ask the children to list everything on it.
  
  

Pelmanism

• Pelmanism is a traditional memory game that uses playing cards. Shuffle the pack and deal the cards face up on the table. Give the children a minute to study the layout, then turn each card face down. The children take turns to find two matching cards, a pair of aces for example. If unsuccessful, they turn the cards face down again. The winner is the player who finds the greatest number of pairs.
  
  

Card Sequence

• Shuffle a pack of playing cards. Deal 10 cards face up onto a pile. Turn the pile face down and invite a player to recall the card sequence. If the player is incorrect, return the cards to the pack, shuffle it and deal 10 cards to challenge the next player. Award a point for each correctly recalled sequence. Make the game more challenging by dealing more cards onto the pile.
  
  

Grandma's Store

• The players sit in a circle. The first player says: "I went to Grandma's store and I bought ..." and names an item beginning with the letter "A." The next player must recall the first player's words and add an item beginning with the letter "B," and so on around the circle. If a player cannot remember all the items, play passes to the next person in the circle.
  
  

New Room

• Ask a player to leave the room. Move objects in the room to new positions. Call the player back in. The player must correctly identify the changes you have made. The player wins a point for every correctly identified change, and you win a point for every change you manage to smuggle past. Players take turns leaving the room and moving objects around.
  
  

Rhyme Tennis

• Give pairs of children a rhyming poem to learn by heart. After 10 minutes' learning time, sit the children face to face. The first player recites the poem's opening line, the second player replies with the next line and so on. Players win points for each correctly remembered line. If either player stumbles, the two of them must begin again from the first line, with the object of reaching the end of the poem.
  
  

Object Quiz

• Select a familiar, everyday object such as a coin or a TV remote control. Do not let the players see it. Ask 10 questions about details of the object's design. For example: "Which way does Lady Liberty face on this dollar?" or "How many buttons are on the top row of this TV remote?" This game tests someone's long-term memory for an object.
  
  

Double Entry

• Make two lists of words. Some words in both lists should be the same, some should be similar and some should be different. List A might be: cat, cold, read, green, key, plant, timetable, guess, fly, spoon. List B might be: book, green, hot, cat, pencil, plant, lock, fly, fork, reckon. Give the players one minute to memorize list A. Wait five minutes, then read out list B. Ask the players to name words common to both lists.