New Games

We have been learning some fun new games in literacy small groups. The first is called "I have who has." In this game, the captain hands out all of the cards and takes the first turn. He or she may say "I have blue, who has black?" Each child checks his cards to see if he has the black card. If so, he picks up the card and follows the chain. This format is used throughout the year for letter and number identification, letter sounds, word patterns, sight words, skip counting, etc.

In math centers, we played racing bears to build teamwork. We rolled a die and had to work as a team to move the bears to the end of the game board. We also learned the numerals game. In this game, one person is the "hand" and the other is the "checker." The hand picks out a number card and puts that many cubes (we called them pieces of chocolate or candy) into a bowl (we called it a tractor). The hand sends the tractor to the farmer to check his order. The farmer places the cubes on the check sheet to make sure he has the correct number of items. This game practices one to one counting, turn taking, regulation, and rote counting.