Memory isn't magic. It can be taught.
Memory Bricks are small picture bricks that help children and adults discover how they remember, and then use those strategies at home and in school.
Created by Jane E. Mitchell from her work with children, university students and adult stroke patients. In use since 1994.
Try a sequence
Look at the bricks below. When you think you've learned the order, cover them and build it from memory.
There's no right or wrong here. The useful part is thinking back: how did you try to remember them?
Did you say the names to yourself, make up a little story, or picture them in a place? Try a different way next time and notice what changes.
Four colours, four levels
Each set has ten wooden bricks of one colour. Every brick carries the same six pictures, so the learner can always copy the teacher's line. The colour tells you how demanding the pictures are.
Blue: single objects
Everyday things from different topics, such as a teddy, a duck and a telephone. The easiest starting point.
Green: one topic
All six pictures come from the same group, such as fruit or stationery, so they're easier to confuse.
Red: which way it faces
Pictures repeat but differ in one feature, usually direction: a rabbit facing left or right.
Yellow: several details at once
Colour, direction and texture all change, so there's much more to notice and hold in mind.
How a session works
The pictures are only loosely linked to schoolwork. That keeps the pressure low and lets the learner concentrate on the process of remembering rather than the subject.
- Set out a lineThe adult places up to five bricks in a row.
- Learn itThe learner studies the line and checks, in their own mind, that they've got it.
- Cover itThe adult hides the bricks, sides and top.
- Rebuild itThe learner makes the same line from memory, the right way up and in the right order.
- CompareUncover both lines and notice any differences.
- Talk about the strategyHow did they try to remember? What could they try next time? This conversation is where the learning happens.
Without that conversation, improvements made in a session rarely carry over into the classroom or everyday life.
Memory Bricks can be used from around two to three years old, once a child can name the pictures and understands "same" and "different". They work especially well with children aged five to twelve, and with motivated older students and adults, including people recovering from a stroke. Parents can use them at home, and teachers and therapists one to one or, with careful planning, with a class.
The manual
The full guide to teaching memory with Memory Bricks, written for parents, teachers and therapists. It explains why simple repetition and memory games often don't work, and what to do instead.
- What the bricks are, who they help and when to use them
- The three stages of memory: taking in, storing and retrieving
- A step-by-step teaching process and treatment plan
- Strategies for learning to remember, with discussion examples
- How to help strategies transfer into school and everyday life
- Instructions for making your own set of bricks at home
Because it includes instructions for making your own bricks, you can start with the manual alone.
Ready-made brick sets
Original Memory Bricks sets are available while stock lasts.
Free podcast course
An eight-part series for parents and teachers, based on the manual. Jane explains what Memory Bricks are, how to use them step by step, and how to help strategies stick. New episodes are added weekly.
About Jane
Jane E. Mitchell developed Memory Bricks through years of teaching memory skills to children, university students and adults recovering from stroke. Her interest has always been practical: taking what researchers have found about memory and turning it into methods that help real learners.
She has lectured on courses for teachers and therapists who want to understand learning and memory and apply it in their work.