The game of Blokus helps develop strategic skills and logic, while being fun to play. Blokus starts with a simple premise. Each player has to fit as many of their pieces onto the board as possible. Logic and strategy are used as you try to “block” your opponents from expanding territory. When one player gets all of their pieces onto the board, the game ends. Blokus promotes spatial thinking, teaches strategy, improves logic, and develops tactile skills. Today, Ethan and I teamed up with Yanuell and Ms. Kara and were able to play 2 games of Blokus. Ethan really enjoyed this game and had a great time.
Today we joined up with Yanuell and Ms. Kara again for a fun game of Word on the Street Jr. This game makes spelling and vocabulary building fast and fun! Two teams compete to select words that fit into various categories and then pull the letter tiles that spell those words closer to their side of the street. It takes communication, cooperation, and creativity to select the longer words with the right letters to win the game. While having fun, this game improves vocabulary, promotes spelling skills, develops interpersonal skills, and promotes interaction. Ethan and Yanuell teamed up against myself and Ms. Kara. They did a great job working together.
Today we paired up with Yanuell and Ms. Kara for a fun game of Tenzi. This is a quick game that uses 10 dice for each player. The goal is for each player to get all of their dice to match first (10 3"s, for example). There is a lot of hand eye coordination along with fine motor skills used. Ethan struggled a bit with picking up the dice quickly but we discussed how this game will help with those fine motor skills. We also talked about probability and strategy as we played. Ethan loved playing this game and had fun cheering on all the players.
Ethan had an awesome enrichment session today playing Yahtzee. We reviewed the game rules and strategies before playing. We also discussed that Yahtzee is all about math! Playing Yahtzee helps to build addition, estimation, prediction, and even multiplication skills. Ethan was very excited to play because he was familiar with the game and said he plays with his grandfather often. He had a wonderful time playing and discussing different strategies that he was applying. Ethan had fun boasting that he was the king of Yahtzee. On his last roll he did roll a Yahtzee!! He did a great job tallying his score card and won the game.
Yanuell and I read a book called Dino-ball that he absolutely loved. It involved dinosaurs who played basketball during March Madness. After we read the book we played a game of Around the World outside on the basketball court. Then, Yanuell and I read a book all about T-rex, in which he really enjoyed. Finally, we played a game of head bands where the players have to guess what card they chose and wear it on their forehead. The players must give clues about the other person's card for clues as to what the other player's card is.
Yanuell and I played an educational board game that practiced picking a main idea card where the player reads the paragraph on the card. Then, the player must chose from four choices what the main idea from the paragraph is. If the player answers correctly they role the dice and move their player however many spaces the dice reads. After, Yanuell and Ethan played each other in a game of chess.
Ethan and I created a thank you note for one of the students and her Mom to thank her for bringing Dunkin Donuts for everyone this morning. We talked about the parts of a letter, and he wrote out the card, practicing pulling down when forming his letters. After that, another student was gave an historical presentation, and Ethan attended, listening attentively and asking questions about the topic. Finally, Ethan joined another student for several rounds of academic games.
Stephen and I spent this class playing Scrabble. The game of Scrabble allows Stephen to work on his word building, spelling, and phonics skills. In addition, I had Stephen keep score which was great math practice. Stephen did an excellent job!
