New Ways to Play Candyland Including Exergaming

Playing board games with children offers learning opportunities to develop counting skills, color recognition, fine motor skills, self regulation and social skills.  Candyland is an all time classic.  It was created in 1948 by Eleanor Abbott, while she was recovering from polio and was tested by the children in the polio wards in the hospital.  The game was submitted to Milton Bradley and the rest is history!  Children seem to love this game and will play it over, over, over and over again……  You get it.  It gets a bit boring after awhile.  Here are new ideas to change up Candyland:

Use the cards only –  Use the cards for a scavenger hunt.  Turn over one card.  See if the child can race to touch an object in the room that is the same color.  Hide some of the cards around the room, gym or playground.  How quickly can the child find all the blue cards, all the red cards, etc?  Add in handwriting practice.  Turn a color card over.  Write a sentence with that color word in it.  Turn over three cards.  Write a sentence with all three color words included.  Make a category game.  Turn over a random color card.  Write down as many items as you can that are that color.

Adapt the board game to add a tactile component for children with visual impairments.  Read about how to do it at Paths to Literacy – Adapting Candyland for Players Who are Blind or Deaf Blind.

Add in exercise and physical activity – some “exergaming”.  Candy Game Exercises sneaks in some exercises and physical activity while practicing turn taking, color identification and visual perceptual skills. This download includes 30 exercise cards, 30 regular color cards and the special cards (6 for the older version and 7 for the new version). Use these cards instead of the traditional color cards that come with the Candy Land® game.  If you don’t have Candy Land®, there is a Candy Trail game included that you can print and use with the cards.  Find out more information.

 

Reference: National Toy Hall of Fame.  Candyland. Retrieved at http://ift.tt/2kVQ3oS on 2/16/17.

The post New Ways to Play Candyland Including Exergaming appeared first on Your Therapy Source.