Beautiful Sun Montessori: 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: