Toy Tuesday
The Humpty Dumpty Wall!: 5 tips and tricks for how to use this to motivate kids to do home practice!
A staple in my office for some of you an your children that have seen me for a long time and it’s safe to say kids NEVER get sick of this game! It is often brought out of the cupboard with lots of cheers and enthusiasm, the perfect way to start a session when you are about to work on something tricky!
The aim of the game is build the wall and knock out the bricks without knocking Humpty down! When playing with preschool aged kids (particularly boys!) they love just knocking Humpty off the wall, however the older kids (school aged and even some adolescents!!) put a lot of strategy work into the game making it pretty fun even for the parents to watch!!
This game is played in variety of ways….
1. As a motivator for working on sounds: say a sound or a word and you get to put some bricks on the wall, once built you play. It also helps to reinforce when kids get a sound or a word perfectly by giving extra bricks.
2. A team work game: play in pairs and take turns knocking out the bricks
3. Rapid Automatic Naming: pick a topic and name something that goes in that topic, each time putting a brick on the wall, see how quick you can get to the top.
4. Reinforcing social behaviour, for example when kids are ‘whole body listening’ they get to put a brick onto the wall and play when they have built it all.
5. As a reward! Kids may simply get this in my office for completing sheet work, a really tricky task or the whole session!
This game can be a little tricky to find, I usually see them at the ‘Toy Sale’ in June/ July at Big W and Target usually for around $25. My tip pop it in a box so you don’t lose the pieces if so it’s a pretty cheap investment, I’ve had mine for about 6 years 🙂
Happy playing
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