Build Your Brain With These 4 Memory Games

Both children and adults need to build strong working memories. In case you forgot, a working memory is the ability to accurately hold a little bit of new information in your head for a short amount of time.

A good working memory lets you be more organized and thoughtful. It lets you do things like remember appointments or homework assignments.

It also lets you remember where you put things. This can prevent you from wandering around the house looking for your glasses, then saying, “Now what was I just looking for? Oh, yeah. Keys. No, wait. Glasses.”

Children, of course, need to strengthen their working memories as a part of intellectual development. But adults need to strengthen working memories, too. As adults age, our working memories tend to decline.

Playing memory games is a fun way to help both children and adults continue to build their brains. Here are four memory boosting games you can play with the Mary Blair Memory Game by Uncle Goose.

1. Classic Memory Game. Place all 32 tiles face down on the table. Players take turns flipping two face-down tiles. When players reveal a matching pair, they remove the tiles from play and claim them as points. Whoever claims the most tiles wins.

2. What’s Missing? Place 3 Mary Blair tiles on a table. Give a player 10 seconds to look at the tiles. Then, cover the tiles with a towel. Reach in and take one away. Remove the towel and ask the player to tell you which image is missing. Add one more tile when a player is correct. Subtract a tile when a player is incorrect.

3. Total Recall. Place 3 Mary Blair Tiles on the table, in a row from left to right. Ask players to close their eyes and repeat the images, in order from left to right. Add one more tile when players are correct: subtract a tile when they are incorrect. How many tiles can you build up to? And how long can you be accurate at that level of play?

4. Blair Bingo For Two Players. Each player gets 8 different Mary Blair tiles and places them on the table in front of them. All the other tiles are face down. Players take turn choosing face down tiles. If a tile matches one of the eight in front of them, they get to stack it on that tile and take another turn. Whoever matches all 8 of their tiles first wins.

What other fun games can you play to build your working memory?