Name, Place, Animal, Thing......Game

I have fun memories playing this game. A great way to pass time and learn, though of course when we were kids we did not have such motivations. Plain simple fun it was, sharpened you up a bit, a way to show off sometimes. Wins and losses, you had your share of both.  The game involves drawing 4 columns and writing names of a Person, place, animal and thing starting with a particular alphabet. The alphabet is arrived at in a random 'start and stop' countdown. You can play with a minimum of two people upwards. For older children, you can add brands, or book titles, or films, or famous people, athletes, anything to make it more fun. Points can be attributed basis many things - first to finish, one with most unique names, etc, or you can choose not to play with points at all.

Recently I introduced this to my daughter. We also use recycled paper from previous years school work. We don't play with points as of now.  I don't even rush her to finish fast when I am done first (mostly always) with that irritating count down till 10, which would go "tik-tik-1, tik-tik-2",  and so on.... My daughter finds 'places' a slight challenge as of now. After a few sessions of the game, she has expressed interest in opening an Atlas. I am wondering how else to encourage her to learn about the world around. Any books, websites recommendations? Spellings too are very creative, so we work on those. And I must say this, at one point of time, when we were both stuck with an animal for 'U', it was she who came up with the suggestion of Umbrella Bird, courtesy Dora, of course.


What games do you play with kids at home? Do share.

Cross posted at Indian Moms Connect here.

Comments

  1. Anonymous22 February 2014 at 05:05

    Oh yes, I remember playing this game and it used to be so much fun! :)
    Another fun game that was also a good learning experience was - playing atlas which was basically Antakshari with places..
    And then, a few years ago, I had a world map on my bedroom wall, and the game was to ask the other person the capital city of a particular country, and we would go back and look at the map to find a new country or find capitals of countries we didn't know about!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Chatty Wren22 February 2014 at 08:59

    Thanks Kinmin, I will keep these in mind! Clearly we need to work on Geography and this sounds like a fun way to go about it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. pankti22 February 2014 at 16:55

    We too played this game!! It's a good way to gain general knowledge!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous25 February 2014 at 06:12

    Wow.. took me back to my days of playing this game. Almost every evening was spent playing this game and what fun it was! Thanks for bringing back some awesome memories Chatty! :)

    - Greenboochi

    ReplyDelete
  5. Chatty Wren25 February 2014 at 13:29

    You are welcome GB, indeed a fav game for many of us it seems!

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  6. Anonymous28 February 2014 at 11:15

    Games to play with the kid? At our house, we are at a stage where we love this game called "leave me alone and go do your thing and don't hover around me like a mother hen". This works all round, by the way.
    But yeah, name place animal thing - I was terrible at it and my cousins, brilliant. Shudder.

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    Replies
    1. Chatty Wren2 March 2014 at 09:33

      Lol, I have some time to play that one with my kids, I'm needed like all the time.

      Delete
  7. Sangitha28 February 2014 at 11:21

    This links in directly to nouns in grammar - best game for that. Bet that is how this game started.

    We play the 'dot' game - bunch of dots in lines, one line at a try, whoever makes the fourth line of the box gets to put their name in, most boxes wins. Great for attention and a bunch of other skills. Just did a post on Carrom. Uno. And card games like bluff, matching cards, et al.

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    Replies
    1. Chatty Wren2 March 2014 at 09:36

      Yes, that is another way of learning from this game, thanks, never considered the grammar angle. We just started with Uno too, and it is become a bedtime ritual. Will look up your post on Carrom.

      Delete

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