Penguin Colours and Numbers Game

Mr Smiley has always liked to be involved with the older boys work and has taken to emptying boxes of educational materials in the search for something intriguing and yet easy enough for him to feel like he is doing something useful. He has enjoyed building with math cubes, making patterns with pattern block shapes, threading wooden letter beads onto string and using my handmade educational helps to classify animals and build a human skeleton (in his own way...the results can be quite terrifying). But the older boys always complain he leaves things messy and so I thought I would make up his very own box of school related items.

Today's make is a cute penguin themed game. I came across on Pinterest a tot learning game where a child rolls a dice and places the corresponding amount of paper fish into the mouth of a large cut-out of a penguin. So I thought I would take this idea and make it a little more creative...the result....

I had previously bought some differentiated instruction cubes and they are great for small hands to throw about and I can fill the pockets with any picture I want. So I created some die. The first dice has the numbers 1-4 both with written numbers and dots and then also has 2 special sides. One is a penguin and one is a colourful fish.

The second dice is simply 6 colours, red, orange, purple, blue, green and yellow.

Then there are 6 colours of fish, 8 of each colour and a large penguin that I printed then laminated to protect. Out of the penguin I cut a small slot across the beak big enough to fit the fish through.

To set up the game I placed the penguin against a bowl to catch the fish that would be fed to the penguin and let Mr Smiley sort the fish into colours. To play we then threw both die and followed these simple instructions. If the die landed on a number we would feed the penguin that amount of fish in the colour that was rolled. E.g. if a blue and a two was rolled you would feed 2 blue fish to the penguin. If a colourful fish was rolled then you get to give all the fish of the colour you rolled to the penguin. E.g. if a red and a fish was rolled you would feed the penguin all your red fish. If a penguin was rolled then you would get back all the fish of the colour you rolled. E.g. If a purple and a penguin was rolled then all the purple fish in the bowl behind the penguin would be given back to you. (My boys had great fun at making the penguin look like it was regurgitating fish.) If you roll a colour that you no longer have then just roll again. The game ends when all of the fish have been given to the penguin.

We played a team version variety to the game as well. We split into two teams and each team had 4 fish of each colour and took turns in rolling and feeding the penguin fish. However if you rolled a penguin then potentially you could end up with all 8 fish of the same colour in your possession.

We played both versions and all the boys enjoyed it. Mr Smiley was pleased with his penguin game and we had plenty of fun learning colours and numbers and making yuk noises as the penguin regurgitated fish!