Hungry Hippos

OBJECT - Feed the hippos!

GAME TYPE - Four team game.

WHO'S IT FOUR - Group Two and Group Three. You need at least four players to play, but probably no more than 12.

WHAT YOU NEED - Four boxes or laundry baskets, several playground balls, and a fairly large area.

HOW TO PLAY:

1. Divide the players into four teams. There should be one to three players on each team.
2. Assign each team to one goal. This is a hippo, and this is where they will try to score.
3. Everyone must try to score a goal in their own hippo while trying to block goals in other hippos. It may be helpful for teams to divide themselves into offense and defense.
4. If there are only four players, the playing area will be much smaller than if there are twelve.
5. If a ball is kicked into a hippo, that hippo's team scores one point. The ball goes back into play.
6. Players may only kick the ball.
7. At the end of a set time limit, whichever team has the most points wins.

All four teams must cooperate to prevent other teams from scoring while trying to score themselves. This can make the game pretty chaotic, so watch for frustration.

THIS WORKS ON - Competition (trying to score goals against other teams), eye-foot coordination (trying to aim kicks), interteam cooperation (working with other teams to try and defend).

Color Bingo

OBJECT - Get Bingo using colors.

GAME TYPE - Individual game.

WHO'S IT FOR - Group One. You can have as many or as few as you want to play this game, depending on how much preparation you do.

WHAT YOU NEED - This game needs quite a bit of preparation. First, take two standard six-sided dice. Cover all faces of one die with different colored paper, such as blue, green, yellow, red, black, and white. It doesn't matter which color goes where. Leave the other die alone. You'll also need enough bingo cards for all of your players. The Bingo cards should have six rows and six boxes for a total of 36 boxes. Number each column 1-6. Each column should have four of the six colors represented and placed randomly throughout the column. You'll also need a lot of tokens or other types of markers to mark the board during the game.

HOW TO PLAY:

1. Pass out the cards to the players.
2. Have a player roll both dice, the normal one and the colored one.
3. When the roll is done, have the player call out what the number and color is (e.g. "Three blue").
4. When the number/color combination is called, players look on their in the number column to see if they have that color represented. If there are one or more blues in the third column, players should mark only one with one of their tokens.
5. If a number/color combination is rolled, and the player has already marked it, they don't get to mark it again.
6. If a number/color combination is rolled, and the player doesn't have it, they don't get to mark anything.
7. All players should get a turn to roll the dice and call out the number/color combination.
8. Keep track of what has been called.
9. When someone gets six in a row (horizontally, vertically, or diagonally), they call out "BINGO!" Check to make sure they got it. If they did, they win. If not, play continues.
10. Once someone has won, clear the cards, switch them around, and play again.

This game is mostly based on luck, so try to encourage the players not to get frustrated if they don't win.

THIS WORKS ON - Color recognition (trying to identify colors on the bingo card), fine motor (placing markers on the card), competition (playing a friendly game with peers), tracking (finding the right color in the right column)