The Forgetful Shopkeeper's Errand

A pretend-shop errand game: your child hears a short “order”, walks to another room where the goods are laid out, and brings back exactly what was asked for — holding the list in mind across the journey and past a few tempting distractions.

  1. Set up the “warehouse” in another room — lay 8–10 familiar items on a bed or low table (sock, spoon, toy car, book, apple, hairbrush, block, cup, crayon, teddy).
  2. Be the forgetful shopkeeper at your “counter” in a different room. Hand over a basket and place the order once: “A customer needs a spoon and a sock, please.”
  3. Your child travels to the warehouse, finds the items, and brings them back. No calling out reminders down the hallway.
  4. Check the order together: “Spoon — yes! Sock — yes! Order complete.” If something is missing or extra, laugh it off as your forgetfulness and send them back with a shorter order.
  5. Grow the order slowly — two items, then three, then three with a detail (“the red crayon”).
  6. Teach one trick if they keep losing the list: “Say it quietly all the way there — spoon, sock, spoon, sock.”
  7. Swap roles after four or five orders; you fetch, and they check you got it right.

Variation: add a “toll gate” on the way — a sibling or parent who asks “What’s your favourite animal?” before letting them pass — so the list has to survive an interruption. Or make it a real errand: “Please bring your pyjamas, your toothbrush, and the blue towel from upstairs.”

Requirements

  • Space: Two rooms, or two ends of one room with the goods out of sight of the counter
  • Surface: Any; a bed, low table, or rug to display the goods
  • Materials: 8–10 familiar household objects and a basket or bag for carrying
  • Participants: 1 adult + 1 child; a second child can be the toll gate or the customer
  • Supervision: Light — the adult stays at the counter; check the route is safe first

Rationale & Objective

“Remembers what they went to another room to get” is a classic real-life working-memory demand: the goal has to stay active while the child walks, looks around, and meets distractions, with nothing in view to remind them. Working memory is defined by exactly this — holding information in mind when it is no longer perceptually present and using it to guide action (Diamond, 2013). Young children rehearse spontaneously less often than older ones; Flavell, Beach and Chinsky’s classic study found that only a small minority of five-year-olds repeated items to themselves — a large 2021 replication (Elliott et al.) saw more of it at five, but still less than at seven or ten — and follow-up work showed that young children who do not rehearse can do so when shown how (Keeney, Cannizzo & Flavell, 1967). That makes the “say it all the way there” step a genuine strategy lesson, not just a tip. The toll-gate variation adds what researchers call an executive load — storage plus something else to deal with — which a systematic review of non-computerised interventions identified as the shared feature of working-memory activities that helped (Rowe et al., 2019). Gathercole and Alloway (2008) recommend the same graded, real-world practice, with memory load increased only as the child succeeds. Expect two items to be comfortable and three to be a stretch at five.

Progress Indicators

  • Early: arrives at the warehouse and has forgotten the order, brings one correct item, or returns with whatever looked most interesting
  • Developing: reliably fetches two items; with three, brings two and guesses the third; can use whispered rehearsal when reminded to
  • Proficient: fetches three named items after one telling, including across a short interruption; rehearses under their breath without being reminded
  • Advanced: manages three or four items with details (“the small red car”), copes with a chatty toll gate, and carries real household errands between rooms or floors without coming back to ask

Safety Notes

  • Choose light, unbreakable, non-sharp goods; a child hurrying back with a full basket should have nothing that can cut, spill hot, or shatter
  • If the errand involves stairs, insist on walking, one hand free for the rail, and keep the basket small
  • Keep the game out of rooms with hazards you would not normally let your child be in alone (workshop, bathroom cabinets, kitchen with the hob on)
  • Avoid making it a race against a sibling of a different age — the younger child’s forgetting becomes a public loss; let each child have their own order size

Hints

  • Playfulness: wear an apron, ring a bell when the order is complete, and play the absent-minded shopkeeper who can never remember what the customer wanted — so your child is the one with the good memory
  • Sustain interest: change the shop — bakery, pet shop, toy hospital, space-station stores — and pay in buttons or stamps on a loyalty card
  • Common mistake: shouting reminders after them (“and the sock!”). If the order is forgotten, that is information — shorten the next one rather than rescuing this one
  • Limited space: in one room, put the goods behind the sofa or under a blanket and add a ten-second “lift ride” (counting together) between hearing the order and collecting it
  • Cross-domain: adds vocabulary and describing words (the striped sock), counting ("two spoons"), and practical life skills — the same game is how a child learns to fetch their own things for getting ready
  • Progression: two items → three items → three with colour or size details → add an interruption on the way → four items → real errands across floors → child places orders for you and checks them

Sources

  • Diamond, A. (2013). “Executive Functions.” Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 135–168
  • Flavell, J. H., Beach, D. R. & Chinsky, J. M. (1966). “Spontaneous verbal rehearsal in a memory task as a function of age.” Child Development, 37(2), 283–299
  • Keeney, T. J., Cannizzo, S. R. & Flavell, J. H. (1967). “Spontaneous and induced verbal rehearsal in a recall task.” Child Development, 38(4)
  • Elliott, E. M. et al. (2021). “Multilab direct replication of Flavell, Beach, and Chinsky (1966): Spontaneous verbal rehearsal in a memory task as a function of age.” Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 4(2)
  • Gathercole, S. E. & Alloway, T. P. (2008). Working Memory and Learning: A Practical Guide for Teachers. Sage
  • Rowe, A., Titterington, J., Holmes, J., Henry, L. & Taggart, L. (2019). “Interventions targeting working memory in 4–11 year olds within their everyday contexts: A systematic review.” Developmental Review, 52, 1–23
  • Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University (2014). Enhancing and Practicing Executive Function Skills with Children from Infancy to Adolescence
  • ASQ-3 (Squires & Bricker, 2009) — Communication items on following multi-part directions