August 5th, 2008 Ladders good Snakes bad Posted by Melitsa in play activities, Education, Sites to visit

After reading Junior magazine, that came via Grandma. I was reminded about a childhood game I love and now my big guy loves.

We’ve been looking for some new games to play as he has such a photographic memory he wipes the floor with us when we play any of the matching games. Grandma’s idea of putting the cards back in different places works still in his favour. This is one great learning strategy he’s already developed. Let’s hope he keeps for test learning later on.

We received a photo bingo for Christmas which he also is good at. So we were looking for another game that leveled the playing field. Never mind trying to let him win. We never really won. Since game play is about winning and loosing we felt we weren’t doing him any justice if we only every played games he could wipe the floor with us…………and it done our self esteem no good either.

So what better game than games of chance like shut the box and now snakes and ladders.

For various reasons we decided to make our own. Although a long project over many days. ( 4 or 5) It did heighten his excitement and gave us a project to do together. Perfect for the summer and just before starting Kindergarten. It was nice to be badgered and harassed to do the next part.

Buying one in the shop wouldn’t have been half as much fun. But you can find them Snakes & Ladders & Ludo - Toyland Snakes & Ladders Learn and Play Rug Carpet.

These are the steps we took.

1. Find the sm photo in Junior magazine of a snakes and ladders board
2. spend 15mins trying to locate magnifying glass. Give up.
3. Find cereal box we could use.
4. Cut out the back
5. Locate a long enough ruler to draw lines and work out a 10 by 10 grid that looks right. ( This took mummy a lot longer than anticipated) We nearly gave up here.
6. choose colours to represent the squares.Not sure crayon was the best medium as the snakes aren’t clear. Hindsight is 20/20.
7. Mummy drew on the numbers that big guy said in order. I continued when he’d run out and said them out loud.
8. Marked a line on each alternate box in one colour. BG coloured these boxes in.
9. Line by line 1-100
10. Looked at the ladders and drew the parallel lines in from one number to the next.
11. BG drew in the rungs.
12. Explained the concept of Ladders good and why.
13. Drew the snakes ( don’t laugh) BG drew in the strips.
14. Explained the concept of Snakes bad and why.
15. Added title.
16. Found counters and a die.
17. Played our first game 5 days later

Snakes and Ladders is a great game for Maths. This game has its own special place with the other games even though it’s homemade and everyone that comes the house gets trapped with playing.

There is something about this board that means you can get so far and then be knocked so far back but still come back from the dead. We’ve had a lot more wins for mummy and daddy ( yippee!) which also allowed the big guy to loose gracefully……………well nearly half of the time gracefully. But the ups and downs really keep all involved. A fair bit of cheating with landing on the snake square but putting the counter away from the snakes mouth means you don’t have to go down it. Raises a smile as does landing on a ladder square half way up and deciding you can jump that high so let’s climb to the top.

Most games last a lot longer 25+ minutes but what a lot of learning, laughing and talking going on.

Try an online version

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Technorati Tags: childhood game, shut the box, snakes and ladders., Kindergarten, Junior magazine, Maths

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