Games for Children Archives

Carnival Games- Ball and Cups Bounce

October 8, 2015 By Deirdre

After creating the “Falling Leaves” cup game, I decided we needed another game with ping pong balls. As it turned out the new game we created used cups too. We are calling the new game “Ball and Cups Bounce” because the goal is to bounce a ball in the cups.

When we first started playing the game, JDaniel just tried to get the ping pong balls into the cups. I had placed cups in three different sized cups into a roasting pan. The roasting pan was placed on a T.V. tray. It took a lot of focus to get the balls to bounce on the narrow table and into the cups.

Then we gave the game a new twist. We had to call out the type of cup that the ball would land it. Having cups of various heights really made this challenging.

Here is how we would have played the game for prizes:

Place small prizes like spider ring in a few of the cups.
Give the game player three ping pong balls.
Let them try to bounce a ball into a cup with a prize.
If they get a ball in a prize cup, they can keep the prize.

Carnival Games You Can Also Play With These Cups:

You could put a sticker in the bottom of the prize winning cups. It would insure that a ping pong ball wouldn’t land on the prize. You could then have the child select a prize from a prize bag.
You could put numbers on the in the bottom of the cups. You could select a number that the children need to make when the throw the balls into the cups. Example: They are told they need to make a 10. The children could try to get their balls in cups with 6 and 4 or 8 and 2. Both combinations would equal 10.
You could have each child call out the size cup they were going to try to land the ball in. If they land any of the balls into that size cup, they get a prize.

Here are some other wonderful carnival games I have shared in the past few days:

Spider Frisbee Toss

Candy Corn Color Match

Candy Corn Ring Toss

What is your favorite carnival game?

9 Things Children Learn While Playing Kids Games

January 7, 2015 By Deirdre

We have never been a family that was big into board games. That is until recently. We have started playing board games on Saturday evenings. What fun we have had! While playing Candy Land recently, I started thinking about all the life lessons children learn while playing games. Later I sat down and made a list of the things I think children are learning while playing kids games. Below you will see my list and how I think kid’s games help children learn these skills.

9 Things Children Learn While Playing Kids Games

Turn Taking

Learning to wait for your turn is really hard for some kids. They just want to play the game from beginning to end on their own. Yet there are so many times in life that we have to take turns. We have to wait for our turn in line. We have to wait on hold when we have made a phone call. Children have to wait until their teacher calls on them to share. Turn taking is so important to learn.

Patience

Patience ties into turn taking in many ways. It is different enough that I thought it should be listed separately though. It takes patience to listen to the rules of a game. Patience is needed for the game pieces and cards to be set up.

When playing with people who haven’t played before or a younger, it takes patience for them to understand exactly how the game is played.

Following Directions

If you have child that is an out of the box thinker, they may feel the need to make up their own rules for games. Children who struggle with losing games may also feel the need to change the rules. They may try to change the rules halfway through the game. One of my two sisters tried doing this when we were little a lot.

It will be important to read through the directions carefully with your children. You may need to have them help you figure out why those rules are important. If a rule or rules aren’t important, you may gather a group consensus as to what rules you want to follow for the game.

Focusing on a Goal

While playing most board games, there can be a variety of goals. You may be trying to get to the end of path, solve a mystery, or gather the most of something (like money).

It may be hard for some children to remember the ultimate goal. They may get sidetracked somewhere along the way. You may need to remind your kids that they are trying to do to get to the end of the game.

Encouraging Others

This is super important. It can also be really hard! A child giving praise or encouragement to another child or adult makes game playing about more than just winning. Parents will probably have to model making comments like the following:

“You are doing a great job counting the spaces as you move along .”
“I love how you can keep control of the dice.”
“It is hard to move back a couple of space, but you did it without fussing.”

Planning

A number of kids games require planning a strategy. Games like checkers and chess require that children think about what moves that will be making during their next few turns.

You may want to give children just learning a game a do over option. Children that are just learning may have second thoughts about the strategy or plan they have made. To make it fair I believe if one person gets a do over than everyone should.

Fine Motor Skills

Interacting with the game pieces and cards requires using fine motor skills. Children need to use a pincher grip pick up and move both of them.

Reading Skills

Many games come with action cards. Some cards have pictures to help children understand what they are being told to do. Other games have words only on the cards. Depending on the reading level of your children, you may want to help them read the cards during the game. You could also introduce words to your children that you think will appear on the cards before you start the game.

Counting and Number Recognition

Simply knowing what number or numbers are on the die or dice in many games requires counting. Children will need to be able to to know how many spaces to go forward on the game board.

Some board games have spinners or cards that display the number of moves you need to move. Knowing what each number looks like will be important.

Here are some wonderful kids games:

The links below are affiliate links.

Hasbro Monopoly Junior Board Game, Ages 5 and up (Amazon Exclusive)– We have been playing this game with my mom. It is fun to strategize on what activities to purchase instead of roads and railroads. It goes much faster than the standard Monopoly game. We love this game!

Candy LandThis is a game that keeps us hopping! Just when we think we have picked up a card that will take us to closer to the end of the path we end up back near the beginning. My husband seemed to have this happen a lot.

Chutes and Ladders Board Game– Much like Candy Land the game of Chutes and Ladders can lead you to great heights and send you down long slides. Patience is definitely needed to play this game.

SKIP BO Card Game– This is card game that focuses on number sequences and speed. Players try to empty their card pile while adding to number sequences.

QWIRKLE Board Game– While playing this game children build lines that have the same shape or color using wooden shape blocks.

TAPPLE– One of JDaniel’s friends got this game for Christmas. You select a category card like pizza topping and try to all come up with a word that fit that category for each letter of the alphabet displayed a letter button wheel. They had a great time coming up with the words using the tricky letters as a family.

If you have favorite family board game, please leave me a comment below telling me about it or leave a comment on my Facebook page.

Halloween Games for Kids- Boxes and Pumpkins

October 22, 2014 By Deirdre

Coming up with some new Halloween games to play with my son has been on my To Do list all fall. A wide variety of games have been placed on a brainstorming list. I just never seemed to stop and pick up the materials needed to create them. Recently the school I teach at received a whole box of headphones. Each set of headphones came in its own sturdy white box. My students love the new headphones. They are great! I decided that they were the perfect supply to finally create some Halloween games with.

To make our Halloween games look more Halloween like I placed a pumpkin on each box. Although I think we could have played the games with the plain white boxes or we could have added Halloween paper behind the pumpkins.

Ideas for Halloween Games

Bowling for Boxes
The boxes can be arranged in a tower or a wall. Deciding to arrange them turned into an activity all of its own at my house. Then the wall or tower can be knocked down using a small plastic ball. The ball we used wasn’t that heavy or big. You may want to experiment with several different types of ball to decide which one you like the best.

Building a Tall Tower

I mentioned that building a tower or a wall could turn into its own activity. Well, here is how you could make the activity a game. We had ten boxes build with. The boxes could be divided into two piles. Two children could try to build the tallest tower possible with their set of boxes. The winner would have the tallest tower that remained standing.

If you are playing this game outside on a slightly windy day, you might want to time whose tower stays up the longest with a stopwatch.

Moving Boxes
The boxes can be place into two piles at the start line of a race. Children can take their boxes to the end line of the race area one at a time. (You will want to mark both areas with tape or a cone.) You can decide how the children will move from the starting line to the ending line. They could walk, jump, hop, side step, run, or gallop back and forth.The team or person with their boxes near the finish line first has won.

These are just a few games that we played with a set of white boxes. I bet you can come up with a lot more. If you do, please share them in a comment below.

Here are some other Halloween games and activities I think you will like:

Halloween Activities for Kids- Mouse House Pumpkin

Halloween Crafts-Egg Carton Skeleton and Bone Soup

Halloween Craft and Activities for Kids

{Free Printable} Word Games- Sight Word Scarecrow Game

September 9, 2014 By Deirdre

I am going to use the Scarecrow Word Sight Word Game in this post to play words games that focus on sight words with my son. I thought you might like a copy of it to use with your children. You actually may decide that you want to play different word games with it or work on other reading concepts instead. It has been purposely left open ended. Let me tell you about how I plan to use it.

As I mentioned we are going to use it for working on sight words. I found a list of first grade sight words online (my son is in first grade) and placed a number of them on one side of a 3×5 index card cut in half. The goal of this game is to read a word to move forward one circle in the game. If you misread a word, then you stay on the space you are on. I want to go through the pile of card more than one time with my son. Going one dot and a time means we will both have time to read each word more than once.

Once we have played the game by advancing space by space, I will introduce a die to the game. When we have to roll to see how many spaces to move forward, there is a chance we will get to move forward much faster. This means that this version will be one of those word games that can end quickly.

Introducing making up a sentence to go along with each word that children read will give them a chance to show that they understand what the word means. You can ask that the sentences have more than four words or more. It would be hard to come up with short sentences that make sense with these words. If you are working with children that love a challenge, you can tell them the sentence should be a statement or a question.

After playing the game with this first set of words several times, I will create another set using different sight words on index cards. Once the words in the first set are mastered, it will be important offer more challenging words. I may place a few of the old sight words in the stack on new words. Words that had given my son the most trouble will definitely need to be seen again.

Here are some other reading or word games you could play with this game board:

vowel sounds- share a word with the vowel sound on the card or tell the vowel sound of the word on a card
contractions- share what words make up a contraction
rhyming words- share a word that rhymes with the word on a card
spelling words- read the meaning of a word on a card and spell the word you think it defines.
synonyms and antonyms- read a word and share another word that means the same thing or the opposite of that word

There are probably dozen of other word games you could play with this game board with a scarecrow theme. (Click on the link to the left to download this free printable)

Here some other words games that have been shared on this blog:

Dolch Sight Word Hopscotch

Tape Web Sight Word Activity

Sight Word Tree Activity

Sight Word Game- Apple Tree Words

Writing Sight Words on a Rainbow

Easter Game- Egg Toss Bottles

March 14, 2014 By Deirdre

This is a sponsored post.

JDaniel and I had the opportunity to go to JoAnn’s Fabrics and Crafts to hunt for treasures. We searched up and down every aisle and found way too many amazing things. I was just looking for the material needed to make an Easter Game with Egg Toss Bottles . JDaniel wanted to see what they had beyond my supply list. He loved the giant foam mattresses that seemed to reach the ceiling. The holiday related supplies also called to him. It was just as hard for me to focus on my supply list.

We eventually ended up looking through the array of washi tape to find designs that looked like Easter. It took quite a while to decide with designs. There were so many great choices. Deciding on what colors were really the most Easter like really helped.

The next item on my list was plastic Easter eggs. I thought it would be really easy to decide which ones to take home. JDaniel loved the giant eggs, but it was decided that they wouldn’t fit inside the plastic juice bottles that we were going to use to catch the eggs. Maybe the Easter bunny will have to sneak back to JoAnn’s and get him one of those.

It was hard to leave our time of window shopping, but beautiful warm sun was calling to JDaniel to come play in it. I was excited about heading home to put together the egg toss catchers.

While JDaniel played in our backyard, I sat in a folding chair and removed the bottom area of both juice bottles. When that was done, I started wrapping the washi tape around the juice bottles. The bottles were a little challenging to wrap. They had a lot of ridges and curves. I have never crafted with washi tape before and was surprised by how easy it was to pull up and move on the bottle when it looked a little wonky (not straight) to me. It is now my favorite kind of tape!

When the egg toss catchers were done, I asked JDaniel to play catch with me. It turns out that I am not very good at catching eggs being tossed at me. Thank goodness we used plastic eggs.

If you would like to find the washi tape or tie dyed eggs we used for this Easter game or egg toss activity or craft supplies for a wonderful idea of your own , you need to visit JoAnn’s Fabrics and Craft.

Disclaimer: I was sent a gift card to buy the materials to complete this craft ideas.

Seeing Green at the Grocery Store- St. Patrick’s Day Activity

March 17, 2010 By Deirdre

I picked up these paint chips at my local Lowe’s store. I love that they have a window you can use to see an object behind the paint chip and see if it matches. The little window made it a great tool to take to the grocery store and look for green foods. JDaniel loves to have something to do while sitting in the cart. This activity was a lot of fun.