Maybe you remember the game: spin the dial to find out how many spaces you move. When you reach a ladder, you can move up. You slide down when you reach a chute. With 100 squares, chutes and ladders everywhere and no reading required, it’s great great fun for little ones.
I’ve learned over time to not barrrage my nephew and niece with a million questions about their lives, because the more questions I ask, the less they’re going to talk. You know, you get the grunts and short-answer yesses and nos. I had a breakthrough today with my niece, and the distractor factor was a good game of Chutes and Ladders.
When it was my niece’s turn, she spun, I thought of a category, and the number of spaces she was going to move equalled the number of items in that category she had to name. For example, if she spun a 5, I thought of the category Colors, and she had to name 5 colors. We switched when it was my turn.
I started off with basic categories: vegetables, colors, fruits, states, cities, etc. Gradually I moved on to friends (”Name 6 friends you have.”), activities (”Name the 3 best things you did this summer.”) and other topics that had her thinking a bit more. In turn, she was free to ask me questions from any category she wanted to (one of my favorites was, “What are 6 names that are good for a giraffe?”). Her older brother didn’t want to play, but he certainly stayed for the whole game and listened to everything we said.
This is a variation of the say-it-to-play-it approach we take to many games (the student must say the target vocabulary word before kicking a soccer ball, for example), and it also turned into an easy way to have a conversation without all those off-putting direct questions. I’m sure it will work with many other games, so give it a try.
Ah, one more thing: my niece discovered today how ticklish I am. It’s good to laugh until your face hurts.
Filed under: Hafta Share, Parent Tips, Teacher Tips
