Playing Games

We play a lot of different commercial games in preschool that support a variety of learning goals. The general pattern for playing games goes something like this:

1. I put a game out, open and with all the parts and pieces on a table. Then I let the kids explore and play any way they want, without teaching them the "traditional" rules of the game.

2. Use the opportunity of small group time to teach traditional rules of games, and how to "break" and "change" the rules is they prefer. 

3. Put the games out for free choice time and watch how the kids decide to play.

The games we choose for preschool support different skills including matching, counting, taking turns, following rules, making patterns, learning number and letter symbols, and starting to recognize words. 

Here are the games the kids have learned this fall and what skills they practice when playing.

Zingo: This is a bingo game which has tiles come out of a chute two at a time. If you have the picture on your board, which is a 3 x 3 grid, you say the name of the picture first and get to put it on your board. It teaches motor coordination to slide the chute back and forth to get the tiles. The kids need to have quick naming of pictures, so they need to pay attention. They learn "all" (by filling all the boxes in their grid), and they work on matching pictures.

Pop Up Pirate: In this game, a pirate in plunged down into a barrel that has a bunch of holes for swords. the swords are red, green, yellow and blue. The kids take turns impaling the barrel with one sword at a time until the pirate POPS out. Sometimes it takes 1 sword and sometimes it takes 10 and sometimes it takes all of them. This game teaches turn taking, counting, sorting colors (the swords) and predicting (how many do you think it will take this time?).

Memory: This game is a classic. We play it with commercial memory cards, as well as cards I will hand make to go along with our learning focus. The cards are all face down and each child takes a turn and flipping two cards over at a time. If they match, the child keeps them. If they don't, they get turned back over again. Sometimes we play that we are all working together to find all of the matches. Sometimes, each child keeps his own matches and we count them at the end to find out who "won." This game helps kids use their memory, problem solving, matching, and counting skills.

Connect Four: This is a game they have not been taught how to play by traditional rules, yet. At this time, kids are filling the Connect Four grid with the red and black checkers to make designs, fill up stacks and make patterns. We will teach how to see the Four in a Row patterns a little later. This game helps them learn visual discrimination and strategy, much the same way the Tic Tac Toe does. 

Lucky Ducks: This game is a lot like Memory. The ducks swim in a pond that moves. They all have a color on the bottom. The kids each have a board with one of the colors. They have to find all of their ducks by picking up a duck each turn and checking the bottom to see if it matches their board. This game teaches matching, counting, knowing "all" and memory skills.