A friend challenged me to adapt a popular game to create an activity that is fun for a child of any age, using materials I can easily make myself or using what I have at hand in my home.. Then she added into to the mix that I must use Zoom, Skype, or another tele-tool to play with my young friend at a distance. I accepted the challenge.
I started with the board game classic “Guess Who” by Hasbro. This game is a great way to build speech and language skills while keeping the fun factor dialed up to 11. The best part is, with a little tweaking of the details you can customize this game for any child’s interests at any age level to keep the conversation going.
My friends at Simon and Schuster have created illustrated playing cards that are downloadable and printable for the 65 games and activities I included in The Gift of Gab. A complete set of cards will soon be available for download here. To get you started playing, I have posted a preview set of cards here. These illustrations are cute and colorful, perfect for capturing the attention of young children. I chose a few of these cards to illustrate how you can adapt The Gift of Gab game #21, “Who or What am I?” , for distance play. In this example I customized game play for a Pre-school / Kindergarten student, ages 4 to 6. This game design allows play with multiple players in several locations using screen share.
Who or What am I?, Distance Version
Target Skills: Asking and Answering Yes/No Questions, Deductive Reasoning, Vocabulary (Occupations)
Materials: Images of people, animals, places or things that have at least two attributes in common with at least one other item in the set; an email or private messaging account; (optional) an envelope.
This game can be played with more than one Player on the “receiving” end of the Zoom/Skype call. The more Players, the greater number of pictures there are to choose from, the more and varied questions that can be asked. (For maximum game play, select at least 5 pictures per the number of Players. ex: 5 players > = 25 pictures. The more pictures you select for play, the more challenging the game.)
I recommend that the number of questions each Player can ask be limited to half the number of pictured possibilities. In the example below, given a field of 6 possibilities, each Player can ask a maximum of 3 questions to determine which picture the Moderator has hidden.
Object of the Game: To identify the picture that has been sent in an email/message or hidden in an envelope by asking a limited number of yes/no questions. The first Player to correctly identify the picture is the winner.
How to Play:
Step One: The Adult Moderator selects the pictures. Use your knowledge of the Players to select the most appropriate images. I selected “picture cards” showing men and women in occupations, a concept addressed in Kindergarten and Pre-school classrooms. The common attributes in these pictures allow the Players to ask yes/no questions targeting one feature at a time in a process of elimination to zero in on the hidden picture. For older or more mature players you can select photographs of famous or historical people, popular culture or sports figures, famous landmarks, book covers, or any theme that will be of interest and spark conversation. Be sure to select images with common features to add challenge to game play.
Here are my selections:
Step Two: Introduce the rules of the game to the Players. In this example the goal is to identify the picture hidden in the email/message or envelope with a limit of 3 yes/no questions per player, one question at a time, when it is his turn. (See The Gift of Gab for game ideas to determine who goes first.)
Step Three: Show all of the pictures to the Player(s). This is the best time to introduce the vocabulary and concepts you want to reinforce with your picture selection. With my example I can talk about occupations, work, man, woman, Doctors, both for people and animals . I can introduce the specific vocabulary for Chef, Police, Officer, Teacher, and Veterinarian. All of this discussion will assure that the each Player has the ability to ask specific questions when it is his turn.
This is also a good time to model a few yes/no questions and answers for the younger Players.
“Is it a man?” (no”) This eliminates the pictures of men.
Is she wearing a hat?” (yes) This eliminates those women without hats
“Does she cook food?” (no) This eliminates the Chef
“Is she a Police Officer?” (yes) This correctly identifies the picture in the envelope
Step Four: Take a screen shot of all of the cards and share it to your screen so that the Player(s) can see all of the possibilities as they ask their questions.
Step Five: Remove all of the pictures from the view of the camera. Select one picture at random from the group and email/private message it to your Player’s to be opened at the end of the game. Confirm that every Player has received the message, but has not opened it. (Or, if email is not available, you can place the image in an envelope.) Now the Players can see only the original group of cards on their screen(s).
Step Six The Moderator begins play by challenge the Player(s) to identify the hidden picture by asking one yes/no questions, starting with Player One.
Step Seven: The first Player to venture a guess about the hidden picture (“Is it the Woman Police Officer?) is allowed by the Moderator to open his email/message to see if he is correct, without showing it to the other Players. If he is not correct he is out of the game, and play moves to the next Player in the cue. If he is correct the Moderator confirms his choice and instructs all Players to open their messages.
The first Player to correctly identify the hidden picture is the winner.
How did I do in meeting my challenge? Did you try it out with your child/group/family? Was it fun? How did you customize the game? Would you accept the challenge to adapt another game? Share your ideas in an email or on Facebook Don’t forget to like my page to get updates!!.