How to develop a child's memory?

“It flew into one ear, flew into the other” - this is how they often say about children who do not remember new information well. And there are a huge number of such kids. Naturally, parents ask themselves how to improve the child's memory, because it will greatly help him not only in kindergarten, but also later, during school. Simple ways and techniques will come to the aid of mothers and fathers that will help not only make the memorization process easier, but also have a positive effect on the entire intellectual development of the child.

How does the memorization process take place?

Memory, as an ability, is given to all living beings who are endowed with higher nervous activity. But the farthest in the ability to memorize images, information, to learn is a person. Researchers who have studied memory processes admit that there are still many "blank" spots in this issue, but they still managed to reproduce the memorization mechanism with more or less high accuracy:

Memorization;
Preservation;
Reproduction upon recognition;
Forgetting.

The child can memorize information in two ways - voluntarily and involuntarily. In the first case, we are talking about memorizing poetry, which, for example, will need to be read at a matinee in kindergarten. Motivation plays a huge role in voluntary memorization. If the baby has it, then memorization will be faster and easier.

Involuntary memorization is unpredictable. The child remembers everything he sees, hears, with which he comes into contact. However, one information remains in the memory for a long time, the other quickly disappears, as a rule, as unnecessary, if a person does not refer to this fragment of memory, does not use it. A kid can remember a person seen on a bus for a long time, just because he turned out to be like a character in his favorite cartoon. And he will forget your explanations of how the water supply system works, which followed the question "why", rather quickly, if the question was asked "in passing" and the information was unnecessary to the child.

During memorization, information is fixed by special "memory cells", mechanisms - brain engrams, which are also called "memory trace".

After memorization, the second process takes place - saving. It can be dynamic or static. In the first case, we are talking about short-term memory (heard-remember-forget). Static storage is a guarantee of long-term memory (heard-remembered-saved-returned to the saved-processed-remembered-returned). This mechanism is important for the learning process, since the child, having initially memorized something important, can then return again and again to this information, which is carefully stored by engrams, and under the influence of new incoming information, "correct" the data, change them, supplement and expand ... It is this that will be the mechanism for mastering the material, which is important for the successful learning of something.

The third important stage of memory work is to recognize and reproduce previously saved fragments. UzIt is much easier to recall what is already in memory. The child was shown illustrations for the rhyme that he taught in the kindergarten - the kid begins to remember the rhyme itself. But if mom just asks him to tell the poems that he studied more than six months ago, it will not be so easy for the baby to reproduce the information. One more memory "trick" will come to his aid - associations, they accompany both memorization and preservation. If the child can reproduce his own associations, he is most likely to remember the text of the poem.

Forgetting is the process of releasing engrams from unnecessary information that is stored and not used. This process of destruction of neural connections is very important for the child's psyche, which can be too overwhelmed if the child does not forget something. Scientists believe that the cerebral cortex is also involved in the process of "erasing" information, "turning on" inhibition.

All these processes occur at the physiological, biochemical, nervous level, various parts of the cerebral cortex are involved in it.

Types of memory

Memory is divided into several types. According to the degree of intensity of mental processes, it can be emotional, motor, figurative (visual), verbal and logical. By the type of memorization - voluntary and mechanical (involuntary), by the duration of information storage - short-term, long-term, operational.

The first memory that begins to develop in a newborn is motor memory. Motor memorization gives the baby the opportunity to learn to sit, walk, hold a toy, a spoon in his hands. Emotional memory at the very beginning of life is of a reflex nature - the mother is nearby, the baby is calm, the mother is far away - the baby is lonely. Only by the age of 6 months, remembering emotions becomes more conscious, and the baby can already burst into tears if he is shown a toy with which he very painfully hit himself in the face the day before. At this age, the baby knows his family members very well and emotional memory makes this recognition possible - he sees his mother and smiles, he will not smile at strangers.

Figurative memory is formed in children closer to 1 year. This is not only memorizing the gustatory, tactile, visual plan, but also the creation of associations associated with it. It is through this memory that the child forms his ideas about the world. Verbal-logical memory will enable the child to formulate and reproduce his thoughts. This will become possible when the baby learns to speak at least 10-20 words.

The short-term memory of each individual child has its own volume, since it is a very individual ability, given by nature, and which remains practically unchanged throughout life. It allows you to perceive new information, immediately sort it and only need to leave it. Next, it's up to long-term memory. In children, long-term memorization develops at the age of about a year, in others a little later. Random access memory is needed to store temporary information, as happens when we add two numbers in our head (the intermediate result after adding tens, for example, we leave "in our mind").

All types of memory interact very closely with each other, without one it is impossible or very difficult for the functions of others.

Features in children

In children, all types of memory develop gradually, and this sequence is of great importance. At the level of motor memory, a newborn perfectly remembers how to perform sucking movements. Emotional memory is turned on by 5-6 months, and figurative memory by the year. From a year on, long-term memory begins to form, and the baby will already be able to remember where he and his mother walked yesterday. Long-term memory will reach a high degree of development by 2-2.5 years. The kid will build his knowledge of the world, involuntarily receiving information during the game.

At the age of 5-6, children usually already have a sufficiently developed voluntary memory, and can specially memorize something, for example, poems or fables, if they have motivation.

There are some very interesting features of children's memory:

Visual memory is better developed in girls than in boys.
Motor memory develops faster in boys.
Long-term memory is formed earlier in girls, and, moreover, it is mainly of an emotional nature.
Boys memorize numbers easier.

At what age to develop it?

You can develop a child's memory from birth. First, it will be movements, and then emotions and words. It is better to train the involuntary memory of the crumbs (after all, he does not try to remember something, he does it by itself) it is better to train in a playful way, this is how the probability increases that the greatest amount of information will be analyzed by short-term memory.

In addition, it is important to remember that repetition is the mother of learning, without repetition, the child will quickly forget what you taught him.

Methods of "training"

Improving memory is not a very appropriate term when it comes to a child. Healthy children almost never have bad memory, it may be insufficiently developed, and parents have to work on this.

It is imperative to introduce vitamins into the child's diet, which include amino acids. Fish oil is very useful, which contains unsaturated fatty acids (Omega 3 and Omega 6), if there is no allergy, you can give nuts. A child needs to walk a lot in the fresh air, as his brain needs enough oxygen.

There are several simple ways to develop your baby's memory that will be useful for parents as well, as their memory will also train:

What did you do? Make it a rule to tell your child how your day went, describe all the details, and then ask the child to do the same.
The book is the best friend. Read books to him every day, even if due to lack of time, it will be 1-2 pages, but reading should become a daily tradition.
The game will help. Play word games with your child every day. This can be done at home or on the way to kindergarten. Tell him 10 words, and ask him to name those that he can see around him (streets, lamp, bus, people, shop, dog, puddle). It is good to train visual memory with the help of pictures. Put some pictures, discuss them, describe, and then remove 2-3 pictures and ask the child to say what or who is missing. Tasks with the same pictures in which you need to find differences will help to train attentiveness; they can be found on the Internet for any age.
Build associations. To make the kid remember better, help him find an association that he understands for a word or phenomenon. He will start using this skill pretty quickly.
Music and foreign languages. They train memory very well with lessons on musical instruments, singing, and learning a foreign language.
Fight for gadgets. The Internet, the development of computer technologies are already negatively affecting people's memory, it is rapidly deteriorating, because there is no need to memorize information if it can always be found in a search engine. This is not a call to stop using gadgets, but parents who want to train their child's memory should allow him to communicate with the tablet and computer as little as possible, and communicate with him personally as much as possible.

Effective games and exercises

At any age, you can use a variety of games and methods for developing memory. You can even come up with them yourself, based on the area of interest of a growing baby. Here are just a few games that may well become the basis for your own, individual:

For children under 3 years old. At this age, games aimed at developing motor memory are very useful. Collect colored cubes with your child and name colors, pyramids. Children from 2 years old can be entrusted with finding differences in two objects or pictures identical at first glance. After 2 years, it is important to start retelling the read tales and poems, ask the baby as many questions as possible, this will not only develop memory, but also the baby's speech. From the age of 1.5, you can start playing mini-hide and seek. To do this, show him three toys, leave two, and remove one. He must name which toy is missing.

For children 3-4 years old. At this age, special attention should be paid to the development of figurative and verbal-logical memory. More often ask to describe the picture in words, describe the character of a fairy tale or cartoon, tell what he does, what will happen to him later. It is useful to teach your child to dream. Show him pictures of animals, then remove them and ask him to imagine that he is walking through the zoo. Name the animals that the kid saw in the pictures before, but “forget” to name one or two. Let the kid answer the question who is missing in the zoo. Every day the number of animal picture cards should increase.

At this age, the child also needs to develop the connection between different types of memory. Ask him to introduce a lemon. Let the baby tell you what color it is, what it tastes like. Then ask to describe an apple, an orange, a pear, etc.

For preschoolers. At this age, it is important to practice games that train short-term memory. Logical series are great for this. Show your child a picture of several objects in a row, and then shuffle the pictures and ask him to return the pictures to their original position. It is very good if your preschooler learns how to quickly assemble pictures in parts. Take just an image and cut it into several parts, let the child try to collect these "puzzles" as quickly as possible.

For younger students... For successful study, the child must have sufficiently developed memory, because the amount of information that falls on him every day at school is great. You should not demand from yesterday's kindergartener to memorize everything by heart, this will train his short-term memory, but not long-term memory. Classes are best done in a playful way, it is still the most acceptable for the child. At this age, it is already possible to instruct the child to solve puzzles and crosswords, as well as to form words into logical chains, for example, forest-tree stump-mushrooms-mushroom picker-basket-pie with mushrooms.

For children over 12 years old... At this age, the child has the highest learning ability. He still quite easily perceives new information, but he already knows how to build logical connections, create images, fix them in memory. This should be used to give impetus to the new development of the teenager. It will be good if in the evening he tells in detail how he spent the day at school, with a mandatory description of his class (what color are the curtains, what is painted on them, what flowers grow on the windows. In describing the people with whom the child met, it is important that the parents asked as many details as possible about his appearance and clothes, about his facial features, about what kind of person he is, in the adolescent's opinion, whether he is kind or not (this develops emotional-associative memory).

The teenager's memory will improve if he reads a lot, learns foreign languages and plays sports. And logical abilities will increase in a fairly short time if the child plays chess and checkers with his father or mother.

What are the best ways to memorize verses?

The modern school uses approaches that are aimed at developing short-term memory-learn-answer-forget. It is not up to us to decide whether this is right or not. The task of parents is to fill in the gaps that exist in this school system and to help the child learn to memorize and store information about what he has learned as long as possible. Methods that have been known to us for a long time will come to the rescue, since our grandmothers once told most of us about them:

We teach at night. If there is a need to quickly learn a poem, it is best to take on it when all the other lessons have already been learned, or rather, 2-3 hours before going to bed. Scientists have found out, and wise great-grandfathers already knew, that the most active processes of memorization in the cerebral cortex occur before going to bed and in the morning, within 2-3 hours after waking up. Therefore, the verse should be taught in the evening, and then repeat it at breakfast.
We teach in parts at the last moment. If a child reads a poem only a few times in advance, imagining as much as possible in the form of internal images everything that is in it, and a couple of hours before a lesson or exam, in which you need to read by heart, reread and try to remember, the probability of remembering the entire text maximum. At the last moment, strong motivation turns on, and therefore the process of voluntary memorization proceeds many times faster.
We learn by ear. Adults have long noticed that a child memorizes song lyrics much faster than stories or poems. Turn the poem into a track by reciting it with expression on the recorder, and then let your child listen to it a couple of times a day - in the morning on the way to school and in the evening before bed. Memorization usually occurs involuntarily, but rather stable, already for 2-3 days. If parents show the maximum of their creative abilities, then they will be able to transfer the poems to the child's favorite music. So, "Borodino" can become a song based on a popular rap hit, and "Parus" - a beautiful lyric song.
We teach on paper. You can dictate a poem to your child so that he writes it down by ear on a piece of paper. Then break the work into several parts, better in meaning, and ask the child to remember the first words of each part, this will help him remember in time where the next "piece" of the work begins. This method, despite the longest preparations, is considered one of the fastest and most effective ways to memorize not only poetry, but also prose.

Tips for parents

It is better to conduct classes not every day, as this can bore the child. Psychologists consider the optimal frequency to be 2 times a week for 20-30 minutes (depending on the child's age).

There is no need to scold a child if he has forgotten something, cannot remember. This situation suggests that some of the stages of the memorization process was violated, you should go back to the very beginning and try again.

Each child is dominated by one (maximum two) types of memory. One baby remembers pictures more easily, it is difficult for another to remember images, but he has well-developed tactile and taste memory, as well as memory for smells... Find this ability, and lead the process of memorizing or "training" memory through its main ability - words in a poem can have a "smell", color. If it helps the child to memorize faster, why not!

If a child of primary school age has problems remembering, teachers complain that he is absent-minded, cannot concentrate, reconsider the child's day regimen... Be persistent, ask them to put things away in the designated places, and also strictly adhere to the schedule of the day.

In order for your child to achieve a good level of long-term memory as soon as possible, ask him about what he has learned, first once a week, then once a month.

Your activities should be enjoyable for both adult and child. You don't need to do anything "out of the blue." If the child does not want to study this time, do not insist. When the child gives the correct answer, be sure to encourage him, smile, sincerely rejoice at his success.