Raise your hand that father or mother who did not spend hours and hours of their recess playing stop, enough or chocolate! And it is that this game has traveled from generation to generation, modifying only its name. It was one of the funniest hobbies of our childhood, at least mine! Why not take it back now so that children can learn to read and write in a spontaneous and fun way! Personally, it was and continues to be one of my favorite family games, I feel that as one grows up it is a game where one never stops learning and that is why today we are going to see some of its benefits in the development and growth of children.
Learning to read and write and do it without spelling mistakes has never been so much fun. And it is that through the game of stop the child will be acquiring new knowledge and new skills without realizing it. Do you want to know what it consists of? The dynamics is very simple:
- Take a paper and a pen and divide the sheet into six columns.
- In each of them a theme will be written. In the first, the letter with which we are going to play; in the second, ‘Name’; the third we are going to allocate for ‘Food’; in the fourth, you have to write ‘Thing or object’; in the fifth ‘Animal’ and, finally, the sixth will be the box to add the points.
The good thing about this game is that it also allows children to be as creative as they want with the categories of words, from characters to trees they can choose to create a new category of words.
To avoid cheating, place folded pieces of paper with the different vowels and consonants in a bag and take them out one after the other. Here’s a tip: don’t include difficult kid-friendly letters like w, unless you’re playing in another language.
- A player selects a letter at random and everyone starts to fill in the gaps. The first to finish says «Stop» or «Enough» and immediately everyone raises their hands and stops writing.
- For each hit that each player has, 10 points will be added; But be careful, if two participants agree on a word, then only 5 will be counted. In the event that only one child has filled in a box, they get an extra, 15 points! The winner is the one with the highest score.
- The stop game has no end. You decide when it ends, but we warn you … get hooked!
If you are a teacher, this activity is perfect to develop in the classroom, because it will be a way for children to have fun while learning. How to make it more effective?
- You can do it individually, so that each student goes over different concepts and then you can evaluate each one; or also in a group, to promote cooperative learning.
- You can apply it at any age (the difficulty of it can be adjusted to each stage of the child) and also in different subjects. For example, if you are in language class and you have to do a dictation, change it for a stop game session. Another option is to use it in English class, more than recommended for them to learn new vocabulary and practice writing and speaking!
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