So if you're like me you don't really care for competition. I don't like it at home, I don't really go for it in the classroom. Especially at the ages I tutor-4-7 year olds. We have a few competitive children in our class, and a few who hate it. So I have found a really good balance, and figured I would share them all. I will let you know, that a good portion of these games are not my own and I most likely won't remember where they came from.
Some class favorites:
These games are great for the whole classroom to get involved and have very little competition:
Dice! We have this awesome set of dice that the kids LOVE. You can download them
HERE. Our kids adore them. We haven't used the subject or week dice, I just pick a random card and the kids roll for an action. This one was "Say it from underneath the table."
Snowballs. This was recommended from someone who learned it from someone who learned it from someone, but it is a FANTASTIC idea. A student answers a review question, if they get it correct-they get a piece of paper to crumble up for a snowball. This is great, but for our "non competitors" we modified the game a bit. We have "parents vs. kids". If the kids say it without any help (they all try together and as long as it's said it counts) they get a piece of paper (we will usually go around in a circle or pick the best participant at the time to crumble but they have a "kids pile"). If they need a lot of help, the parents get one. At the end it's kids against adults. We always lose. :)
Darts. This is my boys' favorite. I just drew a really quick dart board with 1,2,3 as the point values and laminated it. I was told that some have each person have a score-and if they answer correctly they get to shoot, however we have modified it quite a bit. We have a class score. All the kids line up and we pick a card. All the kids answer it, and if they do well (participating) then the person at the front gets to shoot a nerf gun. At the end we circle our final score at the top of our board and try to beat the score next week. If they beat it, they all get a sticker!
Choco maps. Each kid should have their own map. place a chocolate chip(I've used M&Ms or you could use gold fish but we have GF kids in our class) ask them to place their choco on a specific feature-if they find the feature(have parents go around and check this) then they may eat it-if not show them where it is, let them find it, then eat it. When we play this we do half of the time in this method, then half of the time doing it the opposite. I will show them a place on the map and have them put the choco on it. Then I will ask for the name with raised hands. After I call on someone I ask all to repeat loudly. Then they can eat it.
Marble Run: This is super fun, I stole it from
Melody Stroud so read her post on it. It is a good first week game. The kids love it and it's not competitive at all.
Treasure Hunt: We haven't done this one in class yet, but we've done it at home. Hide some of the cards around the room in envelopes. Let them answer questions then give them a gold coin. You could make this game competitive or not. If you wanted a competitive version, just give out coins if they answer correctly and of course the person who has the most coins is the winner. We used treasure boxes
here but totally not necessary. And gold coins from the dollar store.
Rockets: I guess this game is "competitive" but not in the way that frustrates children who don't always remember the memory work. So we have
these game boards and a dice for each child. When we ask a question, everyone answers, and everyone rolls. You color in the space you roll, if you roll a space you colored already, you don't color anything. First to color all is the "winner".
Domino Parking: We use the parking lot game board from
THIS BLOG. The kids are broken up into 2 teams and each team gets a gameboard. We all answer a question together, and then one team picks a domino. They place it on the space it belongs. Each team takes a turn after we all say memory work. The team who fills their parking spots first wins.
Kaboom: This game is so fun. We use
these cards, and
these blocks. We read some memory work, and everyone answers the question. Someone draws a card, and either places a block on the pile or a kaboom tells them to knock the pile over. You play until the kids are bored or you run out of memory work or time :)
Cake(Memory work) Walk: We haven't actually tried this in our class yet, but my son's preschool teacher used this in her class to do review. She used foam flowers, and wrote numbers on one side and a review question on the other. Placed them taped down on the ground in a big circle. She played music and had the kids walk around the board until the music stopped. Then she picked a number out of a jar. Then that number picked up their flower and answered the question. I cant wait to try it, it was so fun in his class, I know mine will love it.
This year started off so exciting. I LOVE new things, and this year we
added our CC notebook. Remember that? Yeah! It was great! We loved
the pages! Love the pages. However about week 9 we realized we were
just leaving the notebook sitting on the shelf and grabbing pages here
and there. then of course you know what happens to stray pages. We
work on a bit of a different schedule than originally planned so the
organization of the notebook didn't work anymore.
