- Age Guideline: 3 Years and Up
- Time Required: 30 minutes (Does not include drying time)
The above age and time guidelines are estimates. This project can be modified to suit other ages and may take more or less time depending on your circumstances.
Materials Needed:
- Clam Sea Shells - (the number needed will depend on the game you create)
- Permanent Marker
Instructions to Make the Game:
The number of clam shell halves you use will depend on what kind of memory game you want to create. If you want to your child to work on the alphabet, use 52 clam shell halves. For number or other concepts, choose however many shell halves as you like. If the game is for a very young child, start with maybe 10 or 12; for older kids, the more shells you have the more challenging it will be. Just remember, you need an even number of clam shell halves.
Start out by making sure your sea shell halves are clean and dry. On the inside of each sea shell, write a letter or number. Write a matching letter or number on the inside of another shell. To make this a little more challenging, You can write an upper case letter inside one shell and a lower case number inside another. Instead of matching numbers, you can write a number inside one shell and make a corresponding number of dots in another shell. Instead of working on numbers and letters, you can glue on a small picture or use a colored marker to match colors. There are many possibilities!
How to Play the Game:
This game is played like the classic Concentration game. It can be played with one or several people. You lay out all the sea shell game pieces, printed side down. Each player takes turns turning over 2 shells at a time. If the pictures match, the player keeps those pieces and gets another turn. If they do not match, the pieces are turned face down again and the next player takes their turn. Continue until all the game pieces are claimed. The winner of the game is the person who collects to most pairs.