Irresistible Ideas for play based learning

Anyone living in Melbourne at the moment will agree with us that we have been experiencing a heap of rain – wonderful, but a bit of a novelty for us here in our drought stricken land. Anyway, that results in a lot more time indoors than we would usually have which means we have more opportunity to do some great large group games.

Louise from Ouyen kindergarten inspired us here with this feather game. We stuck some feathers onto a stick, gave each child a carpet square and had them all scrunch up into a ball on the blue semicircle mat … no peeking!

One child tickled another with the feathers, then handed the feathered stick over to them before sitting down quietly on our green semicircle mat away from the group a little.

The tickled child then has a turn, and so on until all children have been tickled.

It was lovely to see the children’s faces when they joined the tickled group.

It was like a bit of a conspiracy seeing who the last child would be.

What a lovely relaxing game to play on a cold winter’s day. Thanks Louise for the idea.

Our children’s most popular board games is Snail’s Pace Race. It’s one of those great games that requires no adult explanation, intervention, supervision or interruption! 

It’s a very easy game which the children can play on their own,

with one friend …

or in a group. 

It has a dice with colours corresponding to the colours of the snails.

Sometimes the children choose a snail which becomes theirs to race while at other times they move the snail corresponding to the colour they throw on the dice.

We like to encourage them to set the rules before they start playing!

To keep the game interesting, we provide the children with a selection of different objects they can use, which correspond to the colours on the board.

You’d be amazed at what you can find inside other games in your store room to mix and match!

The children could make their own game by drawing or ruling segmented columns on a piece of paper. In fact you could even make a giant sized version of it on a long piece of paper and the children can be the ‘snails’ … Or draw it in chalk on the concrete outside … Hmmm  … haven’t tried those ideas ourselves yet … but we definitely will!

As part of our chatting about the sea, we read the story of “The Rainbow Fish” by Marcus Pfister. Most of the children are familiar with this series and really love  it. We pulled out a memory game which the children could enjoy playing in a small group.

There are many cards in the game, but as this is the first time we have done it together, we chose a small selection so it wouldn’t be too overwhelming. The children turn two cards over when it is their turn and try to make a pair. This is a great opportunity for many of them to become aware of the concept of taking it in turns in a particular order ie clockwise around the table.

They placed their pairs gleefully in front of themselves. We try avoid the “winning” thing and just feel pleased when someone finds a pair.

We let the children reset the game, encouraging them to spread the pairs around rather than next to each other.

After a couple of sessions of the children playing this in small groups, we have a go in the large group with a game called ”Tic tac toe”.

About 10 cards are spread out in the middle of the circle and one child uses a pointer, touching each card until the following song finishes.

Tic-tac-toe,

here I go,

where I land I do not know.

They turn that card over and try to remember where the matching pair is then pass the pointer onto another child. It’s a great game for small OR large groups.