Games have been an ongoing interest in the school-age 3 program. Over the last few weeks we’ve been exploring and learning about a variety of games, including operation, trouble, and Yahtzee. Yahtzee was a big hit as the children learned this complicated game of numbers and sequences. Educator Ali sat with various groups of children and taught them how to roll dice, choose the best outcome on the card, and follow the various rules of the game. It was enjoyed by all.
The dice, however, was a draw to the children itself. Rolling the dice in the cup and trying to get the dice to stack on top of each other became a challenge. We didn’t want the Yahtzee dice to get lost, though, so we brought in a set of individual dice just for the children to explore and play with.
What started off as a game of dice rolling quickly turned into a new game invented by the children of school-age 3! The game included elements of guess who and Yahtzee, while also adding in rules the children gathered from card games they enjoy, like war. A name for this game wasn’t decided on, yet, but the rules were easy.
1. Roll your die in your hand, place it on the table and cover it with your hand. Peek inside and quietly identify the number on the die facing you. This is your number.
2. Determine who goes first- this is where an element of problem solving came into play as the group couldn’t decide who was going to go first. To make it fair they decided that everyone had to roll their die, after first remembering the number that was already on the die, and the highest rolled number would go first, then move clockwise in order.
3. Once the order was established the first player goes first and asks someone a question to determine the number on their dice. One guess only. If they got it right, they got the die from that player. If they got it wrong, it moved on to the next player. The game continued until someone had all the dice.
Some examples of questions the players asked during the game was “is your number an odd number?”. “Is your number bigger than three?” “Is your number five?”
This lasted a few rounds, however they found it increasingly difficult to guess individual numbers. So, they put their heads together and came up with a new way to play- they teamed up with one or two others, combined their dice, and began to play again. This time, there were multiple numbers to guess, but the tricky part was if more than one die had the same number, that player lost all of the dice with that number on it.
This appeared to make the game less challenging and more appealing! They sat at the table and proceeded to play the game, sharing the numbers on the dice with their team mates, and taking turns guessing. In the end, one team won all of the dice, and the game began again!
This innovative game invited the children to challenge their mathematic skills, numeric abilities, and sequencing skills. It fostered cognitive abilities, detective skills, and their keen sense of observation.
I wonder if this game will continue to be played throughout our time together in school-age 3?
