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           Concentration (Clapping Game)

Another old fashioned game that I remember playing as a child.  This is a great game for keeping children occupied and quiet.

This is probably better suited to girls as they are more inclined to play clapping games.  Also, High School Aged girls will enjoy playing this game if they grew up playing it, but I don't think it "would fly" if you are introducing this game to older children.

A category is picked.  A broad category is good for younger children such as animals.  Older children could play with a category of "mammals that start with the letter A", another option would be to pick the category of mammals but in alphabetical order (for example, Aardvark, Bear, Camel, Donkey, etc).  This is also an excellent game to play to reinforce multiplication tables.  An example would be to play with multiples of 7.  The first child would say "7", the next "14" and so on.

The action is:
Slap knees (or table)
Clap
Snap Right Hand
Snap Left hand

The children say in rhythm to the action:
Con-cen-tra-tion
Keep in rhy-thm
All in rhy-thm
Start

At this point the first person calls out the name of whatever is the category.  For instance, Aardvark
Even if the child says Aardvark quickly, the next person doesn't start until the action has gone back to slapping the knees -- at this point the second child would say, Bear.  Play continues.

A child is out if s/he can't come up with a correct category in the amount of time allotted.  Most children play this that a child has the length of time of one round of action (slap knees, clap, snap, snap).  You might want to give younger children two rounds of action to think of a correct statement.

When a child goes "OUT" they start up with the next child and the children start the rhythm with the chant:
Con-cen-tra-tion
Keep in rhy-thm
All in rhy-thm
Start

You can make the game more difficult or easier by speeding up or slowing down the rhythm.  The point is to make the game interesting, allowing children to be knocked out of the game, but not too quickly.  You can play until there is only one child left, but when I played it never mattered if there was a "winner", we just played to fill up waiting around time.

One last idea, to make the game even more interesting is that the children who are "OUT" still continue chanting but do not continue playing.  Thus, in addition to thinking up correct statements players need to remember who is "OUT".

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Posted by: wee wifey at 04:46 PM | Comments (41) | Add Comment
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