Many of you know that I am the Sunday School coordinator at my church. I've shared different games and activities that I have done with my Sunday School kiddos here on the blog and have shown how they can be adapted to any classroom. (Check out this
post, this
post, and this
post for Sunday School games that I have shown in the past)
Well, this year. I have mostly ALL boys in my groups. 4th and 5th grade boys, I might add. To say that the class is very active and high-energy would be a bit of an understatement. So, the only way that I can keep them engaged is to include a lot (A LOT) of active games. If it involves them running around, great. If it involves competition, even better.
Last week we were learning about the story of Abraham and Sarah. (Brief background in case you don't know the story so that you can understand the idea behind the game. God creates a covenant, with Abraham and Sarah (husband and wife), promising them many descendants, as many as there are stars in the sky.)
The story by itself isn't super exciting to a bunch of pre-teens who could care less about having children right now, so I knew I had to make the lesson fun if I wanted to the story to stick in their mind. So what did I do? I created a game where they had to be the first person to SLAP something. Seems logical. :)
Here's how it went down. The kids played in partners and put the game board between them. They shuffled the set of cards, some cards with a star, other cards with a clip art image of Abraham and Sarah with a baby (which I found for free
here! Yay TpT for coming through for Sunday School!)
The goal of the game was to get as many descendants (aka star cards) as they could. Students took turns flipping up one card at a time. If they came to a star card, they kept flipping. As soon as they turned over a card that had Abraham, Sarah, and the baby on it, they had to race to be the first person to slap the large covenant star on the left-hand side. The student who slapped first, collected all of their "descendants" (the star cards that had been flipped up during that round) and added it to their pile of descendants. They then continued taking turns to flip up cards. Students shuffled the cards as needed.
The result - they TOTALLY remembered the story when I asked them to review it the following week. Winning.
So what about YOUR classroom? How can this game be adapted for any skill? Well off the top of my head, I'm thinking sight words, blends/digraphs, and parts of speech.
To Create a Sight Word Game:
1) Create several cards with several sight words on them. You will want several cards for each word.
2) Create a spinner that has those words on it. For example. your spinner might have the words
small, strange, flower, and
them on it.
3) To start each round, the partners spin the spinner to see which word they need to be on the look out for.
4) Then, students take turns flipping up the cards. When the sight word that they spun appears, the students race to slap the star. The winner collects all cards that had been turned up for that round.
5) Students spin again for the next round and look for a new word. Cards can be reshuffled as needed.
To Create a Blends/Digraph Game:
1) Follow the same directions listed for the sight word game, except on the spinner write blends or digraphs that your class is studying.
2) To start each round, the partners spin the spinner to see which blend or digraph they need to be on the look out for.
4) Then, students take turns flipping up the cards. When the blend or digraph that they spun appears, the students race to slap the star. The winner collects all cards that had been turned up for that round.
5) Students spin again for the next round. Cards can be reshuffled as needed.
To Create a Parts of Speech Game:
1) Again, repeat the same set-up directions as the first two games above, except now your spinner will have a part of speech on it (noun, verb, adjective...etc)
2) Create cards that have words representing these parts of speech categories. You will want several words that belong in each category.
3) If the students spin "noun," they keep flipping up cards until a noun word appears. The winner collect all the cards flipped up for that round.
Now - wouldn't it be nice if there was a template that you could just type in the skill that you needed to create your custom game?
Oh wait, what's this I found?
How convenient. Download for FREE
here. All you have to do is add text to the cards, choose the spinner that meets your needs, print, and play!
Enjoy!
