Memory Trays

One of the tricks to maintaining sanity in lesson planning is to find activities that can be used over and over again with different themes.  Ideally, the activity has a double-goal and fosters important logical thinking and reasoning skills.  These memory trays are in my bag of tricks.

During circle time, I present the students with a tray full of objects that correlate to our unit.  At the beginning of the year there are just a few items, but by the end of the year I can include 8-10 objects for my Pre-K kiddos.

In October, we used small items from our Halloween patterning game.  There are 5 objects: a white pumpkin, an orange ghost, a green cat, a black bat and a purple spider.  When I introduce this center, we always name each object and count the total number of objects.

Then the students cover their eyes while I cover the tray with a bandana.  I remove one object and the students open their eyes.

They have to figure out which object is missing.

These memory trays are so easy to put together and the students love to play the game. It is so exciting to see them engaged and really using their thinking caps.  (Plus, I love that we can play this game for 2 minutes or 10 minutes.  Sometimes that's the way our day works out.)

Enjoy playing and learning with your children today.