Tuesday, 10 June 2014 by Irene Hoofs

Make your own memory game using colourful shapes by Yuliya from Yufrukt

Kids (and adults) love games — on the table and on the screen. But as we probably look at screens more than enough, let's try and make our own memory game. Memory games are good fun but what is even more important – they improve our… memory! What I especially like about this craft activity is that children will be creating their own characters for the game by using geometrical shapes.

For making your very own game you will need:
* a pair of scissors
* card (or thick paper)
* colourful paper (different colours)
* glue
* pencil (possibly eraser)
* marker
* ruler

Step 1:
Using a ruler and a pencil make a grid of 20 squares (or less if you are making it for a very young child — we did 6 X 6 cm squares) and cut them apart.

Step 2:
Now take your favourite colours of paper and cut out different geometrical shapes. It's going to be good practice for children who have already started with school and an opportunity to introduce shapes to the very little ones. Try to make all shapes in pairs as you will need to use the same shape twice to create exactly the same image on two cards.

Step 3:
When you cut out enough shapes, have fun creating funny characters together! Use your imagination and turn squares and circles into animals or monsters. Some children will probably enjoy making abstract images which is cool too.

Important: don't make images too complicated, you will have to recreate each of them as in memory games every image has a pair.

Step 4:
Use a marker to draw the details. (give your characters faces, buttons or big sharp claws). Try to make each pair look as similar as possible.

Step 5:
This step is optional. As we were using brown card we decided to cut out and glue on backs for our cards to make them more colourful when they are face down.

Step 6:
When you have enough cards to start a memory challenge, it's time to play! In case you don't know, here are the rules:

Shuffle the cards. Lay out the cards face down in rows on the table or floor. Make sure the cards are not touching each other. They need to be able to be flipped over without disturbing any cards around them. Decide who will go first. Typically it is the youngest player that goes first.

The first player chooses a card and carefully turns it over. The player then selects another card and turns it over. If the two cards are a matching pair (for example, two robots) then they take the two cards and start a stack. The player is awarded another turn for making a match and goes again.

If the player does not make a matching pair, play continues for the next player, who tries to match another pair of cards. Use your memory to collect the most card pairs!

Have fun :) - Yuliya