Thursday, January 12, 2017

Rainy Day Games

Occasionally during the afternoons we take out a bunch of games and building material for the children to use instead of doing regular classroom work. We have these as a reserve as well for rainy days when we can't go outside to play. I've been collecting games for some years, I can't resist good games or building materials when I see them in garage sales and have found some that really work well with our 3 to 6 year olds.

This afternoon it was too rainy to play outside so we took out the games and I observed the children working with them. I saw so many great learning opportunities! I know that our classroom is the foundation that makes these games successful, but I also see many ways in which the games support the development of our normal classroom activities.

This is the learning I observed:

  • Collaboration- many of the games involve 2,3 or 4 children. (I find that more than 4 children in a game at this age makes it harder for the children to manage well independently.) Games invite collaboration and learning to work together is what it's all about.
  • Taking turns- games are a great place to develop self regulation.
  • Following rules- the games we have are mostly simple and don't have too many rules, but there are always some fundamental rules that need to be followed for the activity to work.
  • Sharing- many of the building works involve sharing space and pieces. Learning to do this successfully is challenging. 
  • Responsibility- the building materials in particular can have many pieces and involve quite a bit of cleanup. In our room whoever takes the rug and work from the shelf is the responsible one for putting the work away even during collaborative work.
  •  Language- there is so much language exchanged during collaborative building. Because there is an element of free play to these works, there is opportunity for pretend play and a lot of language use.
  • Commitment to the work- choosing a game, inviting friends to play, playing the game, finishing it and putting it away is a big job.
  •  Inviting someone to play- learning to identify who is available and asking them if they want to play with you is one of the most exercised skills during afternoon games.
  • Social flexibility. This is probably my favorite aspect of learning during games. Because there is only a certain number of children that can play each game, permutations of social interaction get mixed and children often wind up paired with others that might not normally play with.
  •  Learning to lose graciously/ Learning to win graciously.
  • Organization- setup and group management are required for the games to be successful.
  •  And finally, some games have direct educational value aside from these indirect learning aspects: exercising memory, creativity, visual skills, language skills, counting and other math skills, motor skills just to name a few.


Here is our collection of games which we have curated over the years.

Games:


  • Spot it!

  • Balancing Moon





  • Color tower 



  • Mancala


  • Suspend


  • Castle Climb (with simplified rules)


  •  Jumbolino (with simplified rules)
  • Tic Tac Toe 
  • Domino
  • Memory
Building material:


  • Marble run


  • Magnet blocks  (Magnatiles)

  • Sticky blocks (Sticky Brix)


  • Sticks and cubes 
  • Lego
  • Duplo

If you have games that have worked well with your age group, please share!

1 comment:

Maimuna Hassan said...

Wonderful ideas for indoor games! I loved it!

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