Name It! A Game FREEBIE

Many years ago when getting my master's degree, I had to take a theater course.  Don't ask me why!  To this day I still don't get it.  It was a theater class focused on using theater and games in the classroom.  One of the games the professor showed us was Name It!  I have actually played this game for many years with my friends.  It is a fun favorite.

Let me tell you how it is played.  It begins with a set of cards that have various topics written on them.  Have all your friends stand in a circle.  Place one friend and the stack of cards face down (the cards, not your friend!) in the circle.  The friend in the middle picks one card and must name a certain number of whatever the topic is.  For example, they would read aloud, "Name four. . . colors of the rainbow."  Then, the class will pass around a ball.  The friend in the middle has to name the correct amount by the time the ball makes it completely around the circle.  Once the ball gets back to the person who started it, your friend is out of time.  At that point, allow the class to share answers they thought of.  And, that's part of the fun.  Everyone is thinking of possible answers whether they are in the middle or not.  To justify the game, you could always explain that you are busy building schema!

The number of items you want your friends to name can vary.  If you have younger kids or a smaller group of children, you would want to keep the number small.  Larger class and older children can usually name more.  I would keep it between 3 and 5, but try it out and see what works for you.

I rarely play the game for points or winners.  Usually, I just try to get everyone a turn in the middle. You can play for points by breaking the class up into two teams (boys vs. girls, right side of circle vs. left side of circle, etc.) and if they are able to name it all, that person gets a point for their team.

As I mentioned, I've been playing this game for years.  It was hard to come up with categories, so over the years I've allowed my friends to write some they thought of on index cards.  I ended up with a pile of messy index cards that looked like this.

The cards were getting bent and wrinkled, so I thought it was time to clean this up and create a more aesthetically pleasing and durable version.  I took most of the topics my friends thought of and typed them up in a name tag template with a fancy border.  Now, I have this!

I printed the cards on card stock and laminated the pages.  Then, I cut them out and put them all in a file card holder I got at the dollar store.  Below, you can see how it stores nicely and the mini-basketball we use in my class for passing around the circle.

Since I have it all saved, I decided to share it with you.  If you CLICK HERE! you can download the game for yourself.  All together, there are 80 different cards with some blanks for categories you might want to add.  With 80 cards, you can pick and choose the ones you would want to use with your friends depending on age level and number of children playing. I also included a direction sheet with the printable, and I just hope it makes sense when you read it! :-)

One thing you should know.  The cards aren't exactly the same size.  Two of the cards on each page are a little bit bigger than others.  I'm not sure why that is because I used a standard label template, so they should have all been the same size.   It looks huge in the picture at right because it's an extreme close-up, but it's really just a smidgen bigger than the others. The good news is that it is really just aesthetic annoyance and doesn't effect the game.  And, hey! It's FREE!

If you are looking for a more academic related game, I posted another one a while ago called Heart Breakers.  It is a fun review game for any academic subject.  I don't have a printable available for it, but if you read the post you will see it takes minimal time and effort to make the cards you would need.  Heart Breakers is always a popular way to review before a test.    If you decide to play Name It! or Heart Breakers with you friends, stop back and let me know how it goes!

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Well, school starts in September for my friends and yesterday I finally found out what I will be doing next year.  It is going to be challenging and I anticipate a busy year. I'm not allowed to talk about it yet, but I will soon!  The best news I received was that I don't have to share my classroom with anyone this year.  This allows me to set it up exactly how I want.  Last year, I had to take into account the three other teachers I shared the room with, so it was never really what I wanted it to be.  This year, I have free reign once again! I took some before pictures yesterday so that I can share a before and after of my room with you once I finish. Excited to know my room is going to really be "my" room this year.  Not so excited to have to do all the work involved in making that happen!  I know many of you have started back to school, but I'm still in summer mode!  And on that note, I'm off to go play outside! Have a good day! 

And, yes!  I did notice the excessive use of the exclamation point!  What can I say?  It's my favorite punctuation mark!

Blurt!

Do you know the game Blurt!?  It is a great vocabulary game.  I'm going to tell you a bit about the game, then I'm going to tell you how I modified it to play with specific vocabulary and how to play without having the actual game.

Blurt! is a vocabulary game where your friends are given a definition.  The first person to call out the correct vocabulary word gets to move their playing piece that many spaces on the board.  The first person to go around the board once wins.  This is the game I have.  I picked it up at Goodwill over the summer for $1.99 thinking it would be a fun center activity for my friends.

I went online to see if the game was available, and it seems Amazon has a new edition of the game available.

Both editions come with a junior version for your younger friends and a more advanced version for your upper elementary friends. 

To play the regular version, you roll the dice and the reader reads the clue on that number. 1, 2, and 3 definitions are supposed to be easier than 4, 5, and 6.  However, I think it just depends on your schema.  Your friends then blurt out what they think the word is until someone gets it correct.  Here are a few of the cards from the older version of the game.  Sorry about the gaps between pictures, can't seem to get rid of them.

               

On the back of the cards are blue definitions.  This is for playing the junior version.  

 

The junior version is different in that the teacher reads the definition and your friends have to write the correct word rather than blurt it out loud.  If they get the correct word and it is spelled correctly, they move four spaces.  If they get the correct word but it's spelled incorrectly, they move three spaces.  Wrong word doesn't move.  To be honest, I've played it this way with my older friends and it works.

This is what the cards look like in the newer version.  I think one side is regular version and the other is junior version as in the older game, but it looks like there are three levels of difficulty now rather than two.

I can tell you that after playing the game for just a few minutes in class, I could easily tell who had a large vocabulary and who didn't.  It was also very interesting to hear the words they blurted out.  I don't think they realized how many synonyms they knew for different words.

So, you know I can't leave well enough alone. I had to figure out how to modify this game for my friends.

Instead of using the cards provided, I took the vocabulary words we have used to date and made our own cards.  Actually, I have Word documents with vocabulary for different subjects saved.  I just printed those out and cut them into strips, and we used those.  I put half in a jar for 1, 2, 3 and the other half in a jar for 4, 5, and 6.  This allowed my friends to review, even preview, some vocab they need them to know.

I've also taken the concept of the game to teach word choice.  We randomly picked a card and wrote down all the words my friends blurted out.  As I noted earlier, they are really surprised at the number of synonyms they know for words.  We then talked about which were stronger for writing and which words fit certain situations better.  I did it for about four words.  Just the fact that they got to yell out words got them immediately engaged.  There are also more options in the directions for things like Challenges and Takeovers, but I'm just sort of giving you the basics here.

Then, I started to think about how to play if you didn't have the game board or just didn't want to drag it out.  The game board is essentially a square of squares.  Yeah, that makes sense!  Check out the picture.

You could easily just use a paper with squares or another game board you may have.  Or, you could play without a board.  Just roll a die and whoever gets the word correct gets that many points.  Set a point goal and whoever reaches it wins.  If you use your own vocab words, you wouldn't need the game at all.

However, I do recommend this game.  It is a lot of fun.  I even had two parents contact me earlier this month asking where I got it because two of my friends asked to get it for Christmas.  If that's not an endorsement, I don't know what is!  I would issue one warning.  I originally bought the game thinking it would be good for a center activity.  Not so much.  Blurt! can get a little loud.  It seems to inspire some very enthusiastic play!  However, if you have them write the word as in the junior version, it will work as a center activity just fine.

By the way, the Blurt! people have no idea I'm reviewing this game.  It is just my thoughts on a fun and educational game.  I wanted to post about it because I'm always looking for educational games that are worth playing.  Many times educational equals boring, and my friends hate the game.  In this case, educational equals fun and they love it!   So, what do you think of Blurt!?

Update 2/16/14:  I came across another blogger, Jen at Hello Mrs. Sykes, that wrote a great blog post about Blurt! Check out her awesome blog for her take on the game. :-)

You're a Heart Breaker!

Anybody else singing the Pat Benatar song besides me?  I know, I'm dating myself!

Anyway, Heart Breakers is the name of the review game I play with my friends.  All you need are some cutout hearts and a pocket chart.  I have these pretty heart cutouts.

I got them at Lakeshore Learning Center, but I'm not linking to them because I don't see them on their web site anymore.  Almost every teacher store has heart shaped cutouts, but if you can't find them near you I did find some here.

To prep for Heart Breakers, you take some of the hearts and write assorted point values on the back. You can make the points as large and crazy as you want or keep them simple.  As you can see, I go for large and crazy!  You can even have fun points like "take all the points from another team."

Here is where Heart Breakers gets its name.  A few of the cards are heart breakers. 
I think you can see why.

Next, mix up all the cards and put them, red side out, in a pocket chart so that the points are hidden.  Be sure to place them randomly so the heart breaker cards are mixed around.  Of course, I forgot to take a picture of them in the pocket chart, but you can imagine what it looks like.  Sometimes, if my pocket charts aren't up, I will just scatter them on my meeting carpet.  It's okay because I have lots of helpers to pick them up when we are done!

To play Heart Breakers, you can put your friends in teams.  Each team is asked a review question.  They get a minute to confer, come to a consensus, and then give their answer.  This part is important so that the answer is a team answer and no one child is blamed if it's not right.   If they get the question correct, they get to take a heart.  It's that easy.  The teams keep track of their score, adding them up as they go.  Or, if you get a heart breaker heart, subtracting points!

My friends love to play this game.  I like it because it is quick and easy to set up.  Once you have the cards written, you have them forever.  It's a review game that works for any subject.  I generally have my friends keep their notebook on their desk so if they hear a question they don't know the answer to they write it down and know it's one to study up on.  Another plus is the math.  There is some serious addition, subtraction, and sometimes division going on during this game. 

That's Heart Breakers! 

Try it.  I promise your friends will love it.