In the spring, when children have a firm understanding of what happens at school and have developed some independence in the classroom, we begin to introduce games with rules in the 2-Day class. The first game we typically introduce is teddy bear bingo. First, we offer just a selection of colored bears with a board covered with dots of corresponding colors. Children are charmed by the bears and enjoy matching the bears to dots of the same color. Placing one bear on one circle helps children to develop one-to-one correspondence, a precursor skill that is required for counting.
After children have some experience with the bears, we add a spinner. Children are then encouraged to use the spinner to determine which color bear they will place on their boards. Since there is only one spinner and four boards, children must take turns to use the spinner and this inspires a lot of conversation and negotiation. Using the spinner takes a degree of fine-motor control that children are just developing. It can be tricky and children might have to try multiple times before they figure out that they must have their fingers out of the way in order for the spinner to move. In addition, many children are attached to the idea of choosing which colors to put on their boards and begin by moving the spinner manually to the color they are most interested in. This is all part of the learning process and, with some exposure and practice, most children who play this game are now using the spinner in the traditional way.
After children had some experience with this simple game, we introduced feed my dog, which requires counting. In this game, children roll a die with either 1, 2 or 3 dots on each side. They then take that number of plastic chips and place them in the dog bowl on the game board. We limit the quantities to just 1, 2 and 3 because we know that children need a lot of experience with these smaller quantities in order to have a deep understanding of them. Number knowledge builds, so having a firm grasp of small quantities helps children to eventually comprehend larger numbers. Children enjoy rolling the die, counting if they need to and then taking the correct number of chips and then filling up the dog’s bowl. Some even put the chips right up to the dog’s mouth as if actually feeding him.
