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Sunday, October 18, 2009

cora's color game

During one of our first rainy-sick days last week, we all worked on making a color game for Cora. We had just re-discovered Owen's Follow-the-Path Game for beginning sounds, so I thought we'd create a special one for Cora.

Goodness knows we had the time. . .
  • Cora's Color Game: All I did was print out two U-shaped boards from Bear's Words Their Way (2004). Here is U-shaped board 1 and U-Shaped board 2 if you'd like them. They're blank, so the game possibilities are endless. . .
Next, I glued each board to the inside of a manila folder, and we got to work! I tried to spread out the colors throughout the board, but in the end, it didn't really matter.

While Maddy and Cora were working on the board, Owen and I colored the little squares. I cut two pieces of white card stock into rectangles then traced a small black square on each. Then we made sure that we used the same colors that were going on the board and did our best to stay in the lines.
They may look like Candy Land cards, but they're made by us, making them
much more cool (at least we think so).

After the squares were all filled in, we beautified.

We added sparkles, birds, flowers, grass, the sun, and anything else we could think of.
Then we let it dry.

For pawns, we used Cora's little Princess dolls.

The game board is almost ready.
Each player flipped a card, called out the color on the card, and then moved his or her doll to that color on the board.

The game literally takes ten seconds to play--perfect for a 2-year-old's attention span--but it was fun because it was especially for Cora.

Cora's Color Game in action!
We played a few times, until the dolls wanted to go visit Golden and Guinea or until someone wanted a snack. I can't remember now what broke up the game, but I do know that Cora was calling out,

Pink! I loooove pink!
Ooooh, I got a yellow!
Mommy, go to green!
Purple! Owen, you have purple!


Just a little bit of secret learning and a whole lot of playing.

Our next game?: The Letters of Cora's Name Game. Can't wait!

Thanks again to Words Their Way (2004) for providing the awesome blank game boards. If you come up with a cool one for your crew, let me know!

6 comments:

  1. What a great idea! I can't wait to see your name game!!

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  2. So fun! I like the beginning sounds game too. B would love these. So creative. Thanks for sharing the links. We need to give it a try. Looking forward to the name game. =)

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  3. I made a similar path game for Bear but I used a a large die I had made back when she was first learning colors. You can see the die here being used for another matching game: http://theadventuresofbear.blogspot.com/2009/04/tot-school.html

    What I like about the gigantic die is that she gets to practice tossing/throwing and she stands to toss it so she gets a bit more physical and burns off some of her energy doing this! You could also use a wooden block and paint/use Sharpies to create a smaller color die.

    What I love about your game is that your children actually participated in making it. I will try that with Bear next time.

    Thanks for the path downloads. I usually draw them myself and they are usually quite uneven!

    Also looking forward to the name game!

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  4. What a great idea--I can think of so many uses for these game boards, so I appreciate the download. First off I'll be using it this week for a group lesson with my piano students, and then I'll be trying out some variations with my 2 kids. Thanks for sharing--I love the ideas you have on your blog!

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  5. Ooo, Lauren needs a "letters of her name" game. Thanks for the path downloads. I really like the idea of having the kids decorate the game!

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  6. Love the game - it's so neat that all your children made it together. We also have a homemade game for Anna, but it's based more on Chutes and Ladders.

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