Beginning at the end of last week and continuing this week, we played a few different games to work with the children on different skills. The first game we played a few times is a game called “What’s missing?” For this game, we had 3-5 little plastic people or bears of different colors who went on adventures. Once the creatures were ‘tired’ they went to sleep under a blanket, but they would disappear at night. When lifting the blanket to reveal the animals, we would hold back a few of them and the children would have to figure out what (who) was missing. This game required the children to work on their recall skills, remembering the colors that were present at the start, and which colors were taken away based on what was left. The children were very excited by this game and focused attentively. The children worked hard to figure out the missing colors and were successful fairly quickly.
Another game that was played this week was introduced by Debbie. The game was “who took the bone?” A child would sit on a chair, pretending to be a dog, and have a bone (a block). The child would then close their eyes, and another friend would take the bone and hide it behind their backs. The puppy child would then wake up and try and guess who took their bone. This game helped the children work on their patience. However, the game proved to be a tricky one. Nearly every time the puppy would open his or her eyes, either the child who took the bone or another child in the circle would reveal themselves right away. We gave it a few tries, but ultimately determined this game might have to be played in another year.
The last game we played together with Debbie was hot potato. The children had to use their coordination to quickly pass a block around the circle. When Debbie called “Stop” the child still holding the potato would be “out.” With this game, Debbie would reassure each child that it’s okay to be out of the game, that everyone would soon join them, and they could sit on the side and sing along and cheer for their friends. The children who got out, graciously stepped aside and let the game continue and the friends remained excited to watch the game go on.
Throughout the year, we’ve played different kinds of games, including the cube roll game, to help the students work on developing different skills. As the children have gotten older, they have been able to better understand the rules of the games and have shown that they are capable of playing more complicated games. We look forward to continuing to introduce new and fun games into the classroom throughout the rest of the year.
