The Number-Shape Method: How Silver and the Forgetful Robot Turns Numbers Into Pictures Kids Remember

Super Silver Academy is reader-supported. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no extra cost to you.

If you've read about the number-rhyme method, the idea of pegs will feel familiar: ten fixed hooks, one per number, with each list item hung on its own hook. The shape method keeps everything that makes pegs powerful and changes just one thing: how your child reaches the hook. Rhymes get there through sound. Shapes get there through sight. For a very visual child, or one who is still too young to catch rhymes reliably, that one change can be the difference between a trick that feels like homework and a trick that feels like doodling.

The scene inside the book

The green portal shimmers, and Silver, Simone and Bright Spark step out beside a mushroom, where Larry the Leprechaun is clutching an empty pot of gold and looking terribly worried. His treasure map got soaked in the rain, and now he can't remember where he buried his gold coins. Not one or two hiding places. Ten: an oak tree, a sunflower, a toadstool, a clover patch, an anthill, a rabbit's burrow, a waterfall, a wooden bridge, an eagle's nest and a cave.

Simone knows exactly which tool fits:

"We'll use the Number Shape Method to help you remember where each coin is buried. It's just like the Number Rhyme Method — but this time, we use shapes instead of rhymes."

Step one is learning the code, and it barely needs teaching because every answer is hiding in the number itself: 1 is a pencil, 2 is a swan, 3 is butterfly wings, 4 is a sailboat, 5 is a hook, 6 is a golf club, 7 is a boomerang, 8 is a snowman, 9 is a balloon on a string, and 10 is a bat and ball. Show a child the numeral and they can usually see why. That "oh, it does look like a swan!" moment is the code installing itself.

Step two is where the book has the most fun: each shape meets a hiding place in one vivid, ridiculous picture. An enormous oak tree grows pencils instead of acorns, each one doodling in the air as the wind blows. A swan shelters from the rain under a giant sunflower. A butterfly bounces on a red toadstool like a trampoline. A tiny sailboat sails through the clover patch while its crew chop through giant leaves. Rabbits play golf outside their burrow, a waterfall roars with flying boomerangs, a giant snowman blocks the wooden bridge while a queue of forest animals waits impatiently, and a red balloon lifts the eagle's nest clean off its tree like a hot-air balloon.

Step three is the recall test, and it belongs to the child reading the book: count from one to ten, picture each scene, and tell Larry where his coins are. When the trail comes back in perfect order and Larry lifts his glowing pot of treasure, Simone names what just happened: the Number Shape Superpower, usable "to remember any list — in school, at home, or anywhere you go!"

This chapter is one of three choose-your-adventure missions in Silver and the Forgetful Robot, and the child is never a spectator. They learn the code, build the pictures and take the recall test themselves, mid-story, with Larry jumping for joy when they get it right. A technique a child has already won with once is a technique they'll trust again at school.

Why it works

Like the rhyme version, this is what memory researchers call a peg system: a fixed, pre-learned set of hooks that new information hangs on, so order comes free and a missing item announces itself as an empty hook. Memory trainers have taught number-shape pegs for decades alongside the rhyming set, because the two reach different children. A rhyme peg has to travel through language; a shape peg is already a picture before the list item even arrives.

That head start matters. Research on imagery, including Allan Paivio's dual coding work, suggests we hold information more firmly when it's stored as both a word and a picture, and the shape method deals in pictures at every step: the numeral looks like the peg, the peg is an image, and the link your child builds is an image too. There's also a quiet bonus for the youngest learners: playing "what does this number look like?" means staring closely at numerals and their shapes, which is exactly the kind of friendly exposure that helps number recognition along. The memory trick sneaks in a little maths readiness for free.

“Use your superhero imagination to make super memory connections!”

Silver and the Forgetful Robot is a superhero memory story for ages 3–7. Silver teaches a robot the real techniques memory champions use: silly connections, stories that link lists together, the memory palace, and the number codes (rhymes and shapes) your child can hang any list on.

View Silver and the Forgetful Robot on Amazon

Trying the number-shape method at home

You don't need the pot of gold. You need a pencil, some numbers, and a child who likes being silly.

1. Play "what does this number look like?" first

Write a big 2 and ask what it could be. Take every answer (a swan, a slide, a duck), then share the book's version. Doodling the pictures onto the numerals (eyes on the swan, a scarf on the snowman-8) makes the code stick faster than any drill, and children this age are usually delighted to discover that grown-up numbers have been hiding pictures all along.

2. Start with three pegs, not ten

Pencil, swan, butterfly wings. Hang tomorrow's three jobs on them and stop there. The book plays the full set of ten for Larry's trail, and your child can grow into that, but three quick wins beat one overwhelming attempt every time.

3. Build each picture together, and make it collide

The item and the shape shouldn't sit politely side by side. They should crash into each other. In the book, the snowman doesn't stand near the bridge, he blocks it while the whole forest queues behind him. If item one is "PE kit", maybe the pencil is wearing the shorts and doing star jumps. Ask your child for the picture and take their version over yours; the image they built is the image they'll keep.

4. Recall by counting

Later, just count: "One is the pencil. What was the pencil doing?" The numeral hands over the shape, the shape hands over the picture, the picture hands over the item. If a peg comes up empty, let it stay empty for a moment. Knowing that something belongs on hook six is usually enough for the picture to wander back.

5. Let rhymes and shapes be two different toolboxes

A child who knows both codes effectively owns two sets of hooks. Some families use rhymes for one kind of list and shapes for another, which means two lists can live in a small head at the same time without tangling. And if your child only ever clicks with one of the two, that's fine. The book offers both missions precisely so each reader can find the code that fits the way they think.

What this does for a child who "always forgets"

Larry's trail is a serious ask: ten places, recalled in order, by the child on the reading chair. A child who has done that once has hard evidence that their memory isn't small, just untrained. And because this code lives in their eyes rather than their ears, it often catches exactly the child the chants and songs kept missing: the one who thinks in pictures. Hand that child a code made of pictures, and watch what they can suddenly carry.

The number-shape method is one of several techniques in Silver's memory training. The connection trick starts it all by linking one new fact to something familiar, the story method chains a short list into a silly tale, the memory palace attaches items to places your child knows well, the number-rhyme method is this technique's sound-based twin, and the 'watering' idea keeps every memory growing. This article is part of our bigger guide to helping your child focus and learn. For our pick of the books that genuinely build memory skills, see the best children's books to improve a child's memory, where Silver and the Forgetful Robot is our top pick, and memory games for kids for more ideas you can try at home.