A fun and interactive way to engage your students!
One of our students brought in 3 of her 6 week old bunnies to the classroom this past week. Because the children loved holding and interacting with them so much, I created this game.
How the Game Works
The object of the game is simple: Get the bunnies home. A two player game, each child rolls the dice during their turn, and moves their bunny accordingly. If they land on the designated ‘carrot’ space, they collect the amount of carrots indicated. The carrot spaces don’t necessarily affect the game, but add a layer of imaginative play and fun.
Preparing the Game
To bring this game to your classroom, take a large sheet of paper, any color, to use as your game board. Grab a few pieces of construction paper in varying colors for your game spaces. Cut out small rectangles from each piece of colored paper. Once your game spaces are cut out, place one space on the left right corner of your paper and label it your ‘start’ space. Next, place one space on the right bottom corner and label it your ‘home’ space. Then connect the start and home spaces with the remaining pieces of paper you cut out.
Before gluing down the spaces, lay them out of the board to ensure you like the pattern you’ve created, and then glue them down with a glue stick. After your spaces are glued, add a few ‘carrot spaces’ by drawing a carrot on the rectangle piece with a coordinating carrot amount. To finish off the board, add a sentence strip with a title that encompasses the game. I used, “Help the bunnies get home!” For character pieces, I grabbed two bunnies from the animals in our loose parts/block center and set them at the start.
A note on lamination: If possible I would suggest laminating this. If like ours, your ‘board’ was too large for your laminator, using strips of clear packing tape on both sides works just fine.
Enjoying the Game
Originally the carrot spaces were not accompanied by the carrots seen in the photo. However, when added the children were significantly more engaged in the game. They loved rolling until they landed on the carrot space and were able to collect carrots from the basket. Though the object of the game was to ‘get home,’ the journey of collecting the carrots was most intriguing!
More to grow on:
Construction truck sensory play