Copyright 2006 Julie Shepherd Knapp |
Copyright 2006 by Julie Shepherd Knapp. All rights reserved. |
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The Homeschool Diner's Homeschooling Special Situations Specific Skills Help Advanced Level Activities for Exercising Your Child's Short Term Auditory Memory compiled by Julie Shepherd Knapp, copyright 2005, 2007 Some more difficult activities that help your child practice short term auditory memory skills... Play each game on the Advanced Level list, in the order given -- the skills build on each other. Keep playing them until your child finds the games too easy or gets bored with them, then move on. If these games are too hard or too complicated for your child, try to modify them to suit your child’ s ability and interests... or save them for next year. Advanced Level Activities:
Game Descriptions 1. Telephone Number Game Pretend you are calling your friend – what is her number? You can use an unplugged telephone to add interest to this game. Take turns making up strings of numbers for the other to repeat. Start with one number… working up to four digits. Real phone numbers have seven digits, but this may be too many for a young child to remember. Try adding more than four, but realize that your child may not be developmentally ready for a longer string of numbers – this ability increases with age. 2. Number Songs Attach melodies and rhythms to strings of numbers, then have your child repeat them. Try a cha-cha or a conga beat, the intro to Beethoven’s 5th, or the melodies from popular songs. Show your child how strings of numbers can be remembered more easily when associated with a catchy tune. Try the Telephone Number Game using this technique. “Digit span” (the number of items a person can remember) increases with a child’s age, but even a young child can learn a telephone number of seven digits when it is attached to a melody. Number Songs can aide in long-term memory, as well as short-term. School House Rock melodies use this strategy. So does the alphabet song. So does the song “Fifty Nifty United States” by Ray Charles. 3. How Do You Spell… ? For children who can write or type. Dictate words to them, giving them the spelling in groups of letters. Begin with one letter at a time. Instruct the child to repeat the letter silently (only in her head), after you say it, then write the letter. When the child can do this, move on to two letters at a time. The goal is to spell the entire word for the child, and have the child repeat the string of letters in her head, then write them. When you dictate the spelling of an entire word, pause after groups of letters that match the syllables of a word… for the word “student” say “S-T-U” [pause] “D-E-N- T”. This gives the string of letters a pattern, which helps the child remember, and helps them to keep track of “where they are” in the word. The ability to remember a string of letters or digits increases with age, so this is a skill that will develop throughout childhood. (Instead of telling your child to look up how to spell a word in the dictionary, use the opportunity to exercise short-term memory!) 4. Going on a Bear Hunt An old campfire story/song about hiking to find a bear, where you repeat verses with accompanying actions – then repeat them backwards when you run home after meeting the bear. You can find many different versions online and in children’s books. Here is one version, and another on YouTube . One recent version is a book by Micheal Rosen. and here is the author acting it out on YouTube :-) 5. The Name Game This is a group activity to learn people’s names. Play it first with groups where kids are familiar with each other (so it won’t be too hard). Each person says their name, and something they like, such as “I am Mike, I like trains.” The next person must repeat what previous people have said, then add their own name and what they like. “Mike likes trains. I am Taylor, and I like playing the piano.” The next person will have to say, “Mike likes trains, Taylor likes piano. I am Zach, and I like reading.” If there are shy children or new people in the group, put them towards the beginning of the line, along with your child, so it will be easier for them. Put older children towards the end. Encourage everyone to help if a player forgets. Children learn by hearing the info repeated, as well as by trying to repeat it themselves. 6. X-treme Simon Says Like the traditional game of Simon Says, but give multiple directions. If your child has unusual difficulty remembering to do only what “Simon Says”, and becomes disgruntled from forgetting this rule, change or eliminate the rule -- it is memorizing the sequence that is important. If these activities are too advanced for your child, try: Simple Activities that Use a Child's Short Term Auditory Memory Or try out these visual activities: Simple Activities That Require Pattern Discrimination and Attention to Visual Detail |
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