Friday, March 2, 2012

Pass the Princesses Game

I just wanted to share a game that my students absolutely LOVE! It's actually 2 games. One is for the boys and one is for the girls -- now hold on! Before you start saying things about sexism, at this age (first grade) I will use whatever excites my students to learn. At this age, it is Princesses and Transformers! I have two different sight word games that I have for my First Graders to play. Yes, sometimes one of the boys plays the Princess game with some girls, and often a girl will join in on the Transformers game.  As Pete the Cat says, "It's all good."


I wanted to post these games here because I don't know how long I can keep them up since the characters I use are not mine. Since I am offering it for free, I don't know if that is okay. So, here is my Pass the Princesses game. I will keep it up until Disney or the Transformer Police say I must take it down.  Hopefully, enough people will get a chance to download it for it to be useful.
Both games can be played 2 ways. One is just a simple memory game where two cards are turned over to see if they match. If you want to use the cards for this game make sure to print each page twice to have doubles to match.
The second game is the one that the kids love. In this case, Pass the princesses, I put all the cards in a container that you cannot see through and that can withstand lots of little fingers jamming themselves inside of. I use some plastic canisters that I picked up from the The Dollar Tree. I have included the labels that you see here, or you can design your own.

In this game the children, I usually limit it to four,  sit in a circle (mine like to sit on the floor where they can spread their cards out) and take turns "passing the princesses". Each child reaches into the container without looking and picks out a card. If he/she can read the sight word out loud they get to keep the card and pass the container on to the next player. If they cannot read the card, the other players tell what the word is and the card is dropped back into the container. The player does not get to keep it if he/she cannot read it. Play continues in this fashion. My girls LOVE collecting all the princesses. Ahhh... but life is not that easy. If someone draws the magic wand card, they are allowed to take a card from any player and increase their collection (we talk a lot about not pouting, sharing, good sportsmanship etc.).  If the Evil Queen card is drawn the game is over.  Each player counts his or her cards and the one with the most cards (counting their magic wand cards) wins! This is such a great way for students to practice their sight words.  In the beginning I just have the easier words (maybe two or three of each word) and add the more difficult words as we learn them. So there you have it! I hope that you have a chance to download this game and hope that your little ones enjoy it as much as mine do.
To download this game, click here. Enjoy.
I will try to post the Transformers game later this weekend.
Chery