Red Rover, Red Rover Let the LETTER A Come Over

(28 Months)

We've been integrating some old school games into our play over the past few days.  One of our favorites is Red Rover.  Do you remember this one, "Red Rover, Red Rover let Suzie come over" and then Suzie runs to the speaker?  In the beginning I needed to remind them to wait and be patient until it was their turn.  That quickly switched to anticipation, especially when I'm hesitating and using my "I'm thinking" sign. While they were giggling and running and laughing to the point of hiccups, I had a wonderful idea.  Let's integrate some I SPY with letters.

Red Rover, Red Rover let the letter T come over.  Then the kidabunks would scramble around their table looking for the letter T.  It was so cute to watch.  Plus it was simple to set up.  I chose ten letters to pull from (I didn't want them to have to search through 52 letters to find the letter that I was calling out) and then grabbed our magnetic letters and Leap Frog letters.  Placed them on their table.  Rolled a work mat for the kids to jump over (they love jumping) on their way to me, and we were all set.  Easy, peasy.

I would have loved to share pictures of the kidabunks playing, but every single picture was blurry- they move too fast.

This game was so much fun, for both them and me!  Plus, think of all the adaptions that could be made: by asking for one of the below to "come over":

• letter sounds 
• names of specific animals
• objects that begin with a certain letter
• objects of a certain color
• shapes
• numbers

This game is excellent for following directions, listening skills, identifying upper and lowercase letters, gross motor skills and patience.  Most importantly, they really like this game.  We played it three times today!