SORTING GAME!

Second week of first grade is complete!!

I am LOVING this class! They are so calm and sweet and ready for anything! Every day has been so much fun! I will tell anyone who will listen that they’re not perfect, but almost! 🙂

We’ve been working on identifying and distinguishing between numbers, letters, words, and sentences all week long . . . and then yesterday, we played a super fun game that I thought I should share with you all!

By the way, I made this game up ON THE FLY.

It just happened to be recess and while I was eating my grapes, I thought of it.

Grapes = BRAIN FOOD. Especially on a Friday.

We used these these cards all weeklong.

I’ve blogged about these cards before and just re-read my blog post to make sure I don’t repeat myself, and I am here to tell you . . . THIS BLOG POST ABOUT THESE CARDS IS A FUN READ if I do say so myself.

Plus, whilst re-reading it, I remembered that last year, I played a DIFFERENT game with my kids using these cards, and I am wishing I would have played it with this group of kiddos BECAUSE LOOK HOW MUCH FUN IT WAS.

I’m telling you – I am just a make up a game so the kids don’t know they’re learning but you know they’re learning ON THE FLY type of teacher.

Does it really matter if I don’t have that written down in my lesson plans?

Does it really matter if I don’t have lesson plans written down?

I think not.

Oh, I kid!

Of course I have lesson plans printed out and on my desk in case my admin were to walk in. WHY, OF COURSE I DO!

And no, they are NOT from five years ago. Are you kidding me? You’re hilarious. You just make me laugh and laugh!

Er. Um.

SO ANYWAYS!

Let’s talk about the NEW GAME that I invented!

While my kids were at recess, I just went around to each table group and threw a bunch of these cards in the middle. You don’t need my cards, you could just use index cards, too! But my index cards were getting a little bent, squashed, and dirty, and so I made these cards to use year after year.

Then I took the HEADER TITLE cards (or whatever they’re called) and spread them out amongst my whiteboard.

And then!

Because I love to play games with my kids, I finally got smart last year, and hot-glued a picture of a colored paint can into each desk so that each table group has a red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple desk.

These tiny little paint cans ARE SO USEFUL IN SO MANY WAYS! I’ll say red can line up, or blue, please show us how to come to the carpet, or yellow will grab their math tools first today or whatever . . . sometimes I call table groups as well (we have tables one through five), it just depends. I like OPTIONS. I like fairness. I like to change it up!

I’m thinking if you have flexible seating, maybe you could do something like the paint cans on their pencil boxes or wherever you keep their supplies??

ANYWAYS!

Here’s what I did for the GAME THIS YEAR!

I would yell out ORANGE!! GET READY! GET SET! I NEED A WORD!

And the whole table group would search through the cards I had thrown into the middle to find a number (working as a TEAM!!) and then the ORANGE kid got to be THE RUNNER and run it up to the whiteboard and PUT IT WHERE IT NEEDED TO GO.

The next round, I would yell out BLUE!! GET READY! GET SET! I NEED A NUMBER!

And on and on!

PURPLE! GET READY! GET SET! I NEED A SENTENCE!

RED! GET READY! GET SET! I NEED A LETTER!

There were no winners, no prizes . . . but my kids thought they were in the biggest race of their life!

That might have been because of me and my voice and my yelling and my jumping up and down . . . I tend to be the biggest kid in the room most of the time . . .

If they happened to be the first one to make it up to the whiteboard and place their card, they would jump up and down and yell I WON I WON I WON!

So then I would just clap and cheer for them until the next kid placed their card, and then they would scream and shout, and then I would clap and cheer, and the kids standing by at the table groups would shout and cheer, and I’m just telling you, FUN WAS HAD BY ALL.

And the very best part OF ALL?!

LOOK AT HOW WE SORTED THE CARDS!

I didn’t fix the cards before snapping the picture at lunch time.

Every card is where it is supposed to be!

Which means . . . my kids can distinguish between numbers, letters, words, and sentences!

WOOHOO!

So there you go!

If you read my post from last year, and if you read this post today, I have TWO EASY GAMES ready for you to play next week.

So now I’ll just pat myself on the back and go have a cup of coffee.

While I write my lesson plans.

Because that’s my Saturday routine if anyone asks.

😉😉😉