Perth, April 8 2020
Day 17 of #Covid19 #socialdistance
Given the success of the coding game during day 14, today we decided to play a similar game with pegs.
Part 1
We choosed 6 pegs of 3 different colours.
We made a birthday cake with building blocks and then we went inside our cubby house to celebrate birthdays. We hanged the peg outside the cubby house window.
We then assigned an instruction to each peg:
Red-->sing happy birthday
Pink--> blow candles
Grey--> pretend to eat cake
So, we did like computers do: executing instructions as they come.
For each peg, in sequence, we took the peg, we executed the instruction, and then took another peg until we finished all of them. We repeated this cycle twice and we counted we had celebrated 4 birthdays.
Then, we mixed up the pegs, and tried to execute the instructions in sequence, but it just didn't make sense to eat the cake before blowing candles.
Part 2
We then labelled the 6 pegs with numbers from 1 to 6, hanged them again and set another flow of instructions.
For each peg
Pick the peg
Read the number
is it peg n. 4?
yes sing and dance ring-a-ring a rosy
no, 1 run around the house.
This was a lot of fun. So we took another 4 pegs and labelled them to 10.
We then played the popular counting rhyme where each number is associated to an action (see below). The instructions then were:
For each peg
Pick the peg
Read the number
Do the action that the rhyme suggests for that number
Rhyme:
Number one, show your tongue,
Number Two, say boo!
Number Three, touch your knee,
Number Four, touch the floor,
Number Five, pretend to dive,
Number Six, wiggle your hips,
Number Seven, jump to eleven,
Number Eight, stand up straight,
Number Nine, touch your spine,
Number Ten, do it all over again.
We tried mixing the pegs randomly. This altered the sequence of the actions and had no particular consequence, except "number 10 do it again" it depends on which number was before 10.
Definitely, mixing instructions in this case was not as bad as eating the cake before blowing the candles!
Rookie error: don't do this activity in the morning IF your child does not have day naps anymore, especially on a sunny day. My daughter had fun but got exhausted and we had to deal with her exhaustion for the rest of the day!
Learning outcomes:
Following instructions (sequences, ordering)
Counting
I think 3.5 year old is the minimum age for this activity. It may be more fun in groups. It can be extended to more complex games for older children.
Materials: pegs, labels
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