Here’s a great little receptive (listening skills) game all kids really love: Hammer Time.
I think there are many different ways you can play or adapt this simple game. Given that I’m cover teaching classes at the moment, I make minor tweaks to how I present the game, based upon my quick assessment of what each different group of children will be capable of quickly picking up.
Basically, the children form a circle and sit on the ground. Super Simple Song’s ‘Make a Circle’ song is a fun song to transition into this game. You (although, preferably the teaching assistants) can use the time during this song to make any adjustments to the classroom from the last activity, as the children are singing/moving to the song.
Next, you demo the activity. This involves placing the vocabulary flash cards in the middle of the circle, and the children pass the hammer around until you say ‘stop!’. Then the child listens and hits the flashcard you say. You can swap a student in to be the teacher so that it has more student-student speaking, if you wish.
I often play music as the students are passing the hammer(s) around the circle, and when I pause it, I shout out a new vocabulary word.
The kind of things I demo not to do are: hitting the next person on the head, hitting yourself on the head, touching the flash cards that are sitting in the middle of the circle, smashing the hammer too hard, or repeatedly smashing the hammer on the flash cards.
The hammers themselves can be picked up at dollar shops, or here at Amazon.com. Having tried a few different styles of hammer, I prefer the style above. (I note that these ones are jumbo size, and I typically use smaller hammers for Hammer Time. The smaller ones also fit well into your backpack if you’re transporting them around.) Some of other brands of hammers that I’ve purchased have not lasted as long as the ones pictured above.
I hope your children enjoy Hammer Time as much as the children in my classes do.
