Play a card-flipping concentration game to help your child develop his ability to remember locations. Start with a set of about four to six pairs of picture cards. Make your own based on your child's interests, or look for free printables on the Internet. Suggested topics include farm animals, the weather, pets, foods and forms of transportation. Kids flip two cards at a time, trying to find matching pairs. If a match is found, the child gets to keep the cards in his own pile. If the cards don't match, they get flipped back over for the next turn. If your preschooler is starting to develop written language skills, you can modify this game slightly to encourage literacy development. Instead of having two identical pictures to form each pair, have one picture card and one word card that corresponds to it. Kids work to match pictures with their corresponding words instead of matching pictures to each other.
Collect five to ten small random items from around the house and put them in a bag. Objects may include pens, coins, keys, toys, board game pieces, pieces of string and anything else you can think of. Sit on the floor with your child, and have her help you remove the objects from the bag and place them in front of her. Talk about the items for awhile, discussing properties like their shapes, colors and uses. Now, tell your child to hide her eyes; you're going to take one of the objects away, and she has to say what's missing. After your child has had a turn to guess, give her a chance to fool you by tucking an object back in the bag while you close your eyes.
If you have a piano or keyboard at your house, you can challenge your child by asking her to copy a simple tune that you play. Use a restricted range of about five keys, and start by stringing three notes together to see if she can repeat your actions. Add on one note each turn. At the end of the game, encourage your preschooler to compose her own song and teach you how to play it.
Pretend that you're going on a trip and you need to decide what ten things to pack. Take turns going back and forth. The first person says something like, "I'm going on a trip to Mexico, and I'm packing my bathing suit." When the second person takes a turn, he needs to repeat what's been said and add a second item: "I'm going on a trip to Mexico, and I'm packing my bathing suit and my sunscreen." The game continues like this until someone makes a mistake. If your child knows his ABCs, you can add a twist to this game by saying that the person needs to say an item that goes with the next letter of the alphabet. The first person would name something starting with "A," the second person something starting with "B" and so on.
If you want to help your preschooler develop her computing skills, spend some time playing memory games available on the Internet. Building Blocks for a Healthy Future, a website maintained by the US Department of Health and Human Services, offers some interactive memory games aimed to encourage cognitive development. If you have an iPod, iPhone or iPad, look for games like the currently offered "Preschool Memory Match" to enjoy with your child.