Make Your Own Hullabaloo

The most used game we own is Cranuim Hullabaloo.  It's one game that I don't mind playing with the girls and at every age they have enjoyed it.  If you haven't heard of it, there is a control box that shouts out commands like, "Spin to a triangle.", "Slither to a food.", "Put your hand on a circle and touch your nose to a red.".  There are several pads that you lay all over the floor.  You are told how to move and where to go.  It reinforces colors, shapes, and simple categories (foods, animals, and musical instruments) and encourages creativeness as well, "Winner, do a funky dance.".  We play it over and over.   

I decided to make a similar game for my preschool classroom to help with letters, numbers, shapes, and colors.  I laminated several different colors of plain construction paper and cut a circle, triangle, rectangle, and square out of each color, big enough for at least two children to stand on it at the same time.  I purposely didn't draw anything on them before I laminated because I wanted to be able to change the items that were on them to correspond to our current unit or letter.  Did you know that Sharpie stays on a laminated surface when touched but comes off easily with an eraser?  This is perfect for me to change up the playing pieces.   I placed a piece of self stick Velcro (the harder side) on the bottom of each shape so an unsuspecting student doesn't slide across the room while jumping to a green.  It doesn't make the piece completely stick to the floor but it does catch so the piece won't slide.

I was thinking of putting slips of paper with directions on them in a bowl and draw them as we go, but decided to just call out moves as we go.

Possible items to mark on the pads:

Letters (capital and lower case)

Numbers

Site Words

Anything you can draw with simple catagories.

Possible movements:

Slither

Jump

Crawl

Skip

Jump

Move sideways

Fly

Zoom

Dance

Possible commands:

Move sideways to a red.

Slither to a capital letter.

Fly to an animal.

Put your knee on a vowel, touch your nose to a square.

Crawl to a hippopotamus and join hands with as many friends as you can.

Zoom to a letter that is in your name.

You get it :)

Have fun with it!

This made up game works for me!

See more Works for Me Wednesday ideas as We Are THAT Family.