Mr. Cucumber's Sticker Spots

A look-hide-and-point game with a funny drawn character. Mr. Cucumber has stickers on a few body parts; your child studies him, he is covered up, and then they show on a blank Mr. Cucumber (or on their own body) exactly where the stickers were.

Draw two matching Mr. Cucumbers on two sheets of paper — a simple long green body with a head, two arms, two hands, a tummy, two legs, and two feet. No need for art skills.
Secretly put two small stickers (or coins, or dots of play-dough) on one drawing — say, the left hand and the tummy.
Show it for about five seconds. “Look carefully — where has Mr. Cucumber got his spots today?” No naming the parts aloud for them.
Cover it with a tea towel, count slowly to three together, then hand over the blank Mr. Cucumber: “Show me where his spots were.”
Your child points to, or places counters on, the same places. Lift the towel and check together.
Add a spot when two are easy — three, then four — and change the places every round.
Swap: your child decorates Mr. Cucumber and you do the remembering.

Variation: play it on real bodies — put stickers on your elbow, knee, and shoulder, let your child look, hide under a blanket, and they touch the same places on themselves. Or use a teddy and clothes-pegs.

Requirements

Space: A table or a patch of floor
Surface: Any flat surface for the drawings
Materials: Two sheets of paper and a green crayon or pen; small stickers, coins, or play-dough dots; a tea towel to cover
Participants: 1 adult + 1 child; siblings can take turns hiding and finding
Supervision: Light — closer if small stickers or coins are used near under-3s

Rationale & Objective

This is a home version of the Mr. Cucumber task, devised by Robbie Case (1985) to estimate how many separate things a young child can hold in mind at once — the examiner shows an outline figure with coloured stickers on some body parts, removes it, and the child points to the same places on a blank figure. It has been used widely since as a measure of working-memory capacity in young children (Morra, 1994). The task is a neat mix: the positions are seen rather than heard, yet each one has a ready name (hand, knee, tummy), so children can hold them spatially, verbally, or both — and a child who starts muttering “hand, tummy, foot” has discovered a strategy worth praising. Unlike a tapped path, there is no order to keep, so the game isolates how many items can be kept active at once, which at five is typically two to three and grows slowly with age (Simmering, 2012; Cowan, 2016). The short covered count matters: it means the answer cannot be read off a lingering glimpse and has to be maintained. As with all the span-style games in this pool, expect children to get better at this game and at looking carefully; claims of wider “memory boosting” are not well supported (Melby-Lervåg & Hulme, 2013).

Progress Indicators

Early: finds one spot reliably; with two, finds one and guesses the other, often choosing a nearby or mirror-image body part
Developing: recalls two spots most of the time; with three, gets two and misplaces or forgets the third; mixes up left and right sides
Proficient: recalls three spots after a three-second cover, including the correct side; begins to name the parts under their breath while looking
Advanced: recalls four spots on some tries, copes with a longer cover or a quick distracting question, and sets fair puzzles for an adult and checks them accurately

Safety Notes

Small stickers, coins, and play-dough dots are choking hazards for under-3s — use larger stickers or drawn spots if a younger sibling is nearby
In the real-body version, use stickers that peel off skin and clothes easily and keep them away from eyes, mouths, and hair
Keep the look time generous and the number of spots low enough that your child succeeds most of the time; this is a game about noticing, not a test
Left–right mix-ups are completely normal at five and are not a memory problem — accept either side at first if it keeps the game fun

Hints

Playfulness: give Mr. Cucumber a story — he has chickenpox, he has been splashed with paint, he has collected medals — and a silly voice that says “thank you, that’s just where it itched!”
Sustain interest: draw new characters (Mrs. Carrot, a robot, a dinosaur, your child’s own outline traced on wallpaper lining) and let your child choose and place the stickers
Common mistake: naming the parts for your child (“look, hand and foot”), which turns it into a listening task, or lifting the cover the instant it goes down. Stay quiet and count to three
No equipment: skip the drawing — touch two or three places on your own body, have your child close their eyes for a count of three, then touch the same places on theirs
Cross-domain: builds body-part vocabulary (elbow, ankle, wrist, shoulder) and left/right awareness; drawing the figure adds fine-motor and person-drawing practice; counting the spots adds numeracy
Progression: one spot → two spots → three spots → longer cover (count to five, then ten) → four spots → spots in two colours where the colour must be remembered too → child sets the puzzles

Sources

Case, R. (1985). Intellectual Development: Birth to Adulthood. Academic Press (origin of the Mr. Cucumber task)
Morra, S. (1994). “Issues in working memory measurement: Testing for M capacity.” International Journal of Behavioral Development, 17(1), 143–159
Simmering, V. R. (2012). “The development of visual working memory capacity during early childhood.” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 111(4), 695–707
Cowan, N. (2016). “Working memory maturation: Can we get at the essence of cognitive growth?” Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(2), 239–264
Alloway, T. P., Gathercole, S. E. & Pickering, S. J. (2006). “Verbal and visuospatial short-term and working memory in children: Are they separable?” Child Development, 77(6), 1698–1716
Melby-Lervåg, M. & Hulme, C. (2013). “Is working memory training effective? A meta-analytic review.” Developmental Psychology, 49(2), 270–291