[M00nshine]

Well, I found I was having trouble keeping the kids attention whilst listing new words. I generally introduce a phrase, in the above case "what shape is this?" and the kids reply "It's a diamond" or whatever but apart from looking for shapes in the room to recognise the symbol or just colouring in pictures of shapes or whatever not very much speaking was happening, that's when I discovered a set of dominoes with shapes on them.

I've found a few sets for various abilities. The first set is just the shapes which I use for the younger kids. They take X amount of cards so that there are a few left over. Then the conversation goes something like this "Okay, put down one domino to start, Paul says I'm putting down square and circle, Mary needs square or circle. Okay, Mary your turn. Mary say I'm putting down square and triangle, John needs circle or triangle, Okay John, your turn. John says, I'm knocking, I say take a domino from the pile, your turn Peter." etc, etc.

The second set has a picture of the shape on one side and a different written shape on the other, ie left hand side has a picture of a circle, right hand side has square written on it. The purpose here is to match the picture with either another picture or to match it with the written word or vice versa.

A third set (which I haven't yet tried) has coloured shapes on one side and a written colour on the other, ie a red triangle on the left hand side and the word yellow on the right hand side.

I have so far used the first two sets successfully but I have a limited number of children who can read so I thought just picture dominoes for the younger kids would be best. The groups I have are very small so it's then possible for me to hear all the kids say the target language in turn and as it's not too competitive a game they can help one another out if they can't remember the word as it doesn't influence the winning or losing. After the first child has used up all their dominoes, the game can still be continued until nobody can go any further.

I've just made up a set of weather and season dominoes using your worksheet wizard which I'll then laminate and cut up as you suggested horizontally and vertically to make another great set to use.

I hope my explanation is clear enough on how we play. As the kids get used to the vocab used in playing dominoes, I hope to expand it into longer sentences, ie I'm putting down square and circle, Mary needs to put down ... or ... I'm knocking as I don't have square or circle, I need to take a fresh domino." Something like that.

I have kids aged 2 to 8 in different groups and hope to be able to play this game with all of them at different levels but I only have a maximum of 10 children per group. For larger classes you would have to break the kids into smaller groups and flit from group to group to help out initially but then I should think this game could be self-controlled.

Cheers

M00nshine