Activity: Guess!

Build important listening, language, and social skills by playing fun guessing games with your child.

Materials:

• small bag
• 5-10 kitchen items: spoon, fork, cup, cup towel, potholder, sponge or scrubber, along with other familiar kitchen gadgets that will fit in the sack

Directions:
Share with your child that you have some familiar kitchen items in the bag to play a fun guessing game. Let your child reach into the bag, feel and name each item. Pull items out of the bag and talk about what they are used for and what material(s) they are made from. Ask your child to close his/her eyes. Quietly remove one item from the group. Ask your child to open eyes and guess which item is missing. Now, turn about is fair play! When all the items have been taken from the group, then reverse roles and begin guessing which items your child has removed from the group. Extend the idea by allowing your child to gather other objects to put into the bag for another fun round of "Guess!"

Talk about It: Encourage your child to recall information about books, television programs, and to share feelings about people and daily experiences to build language and social awareness.

Take it Further: Colorful Impressions! Take guessing one step further by putting five flat objects into separate closed envelopes. Ask your child to guess what is inside each envelope. Then have your child color the surface of each envelope to see what kind of impression the object makes, which should make the guessing much easier. (Suggestions: leaf, stamp, ice cream stick, button, small comb, coin, etc.) This is a fun game for friends to enjoy, too!

With a Group: Help your group build important listening, concentration, and communication skills with this fun game of "Spread the Word." Have children sit in a circle. Hand each child a toilet tissue tube (or cut paper towel tube in half). Quietly, say a simple age-appropriate sentence in the first person's ear. For young children say, "There's a big red dog sleeping in my bed." For older children say, "I saw a blue monkey sliding down on Clifford's long red tail." The goal is for the statement to travel around the entire circle and end up unchanged as the last person says the statement out loud. Begin each new round with a new person and award the group with a prize each time the statement makes it all the way around the circle without a change.