Directions

My pupils love being blindfolded. When I get my scarf or my blindfolds out, I always see 30 children full of excitement with their hands up waiting to be called out. In this post I will show you 3 games we have to play "in the dark":-).

The lighthouse and the boat

 

We need two volunteers for this game, one pupil will be the lighthouse, the other one will be the boat. Because kids love toys, I give a small lighthouse out to the lighthouse pupil, and blindfold the other one, with a newspaper boat on his/her head. I place them far away from each other. It is dark at night on the sea and the boat needs directions from the lighthouse. The boat person is blindfolded, can't see at all and only relies on the instructions. It is very funny to see the boat bumping into chairs, pupils and finally in the lighthouse.

 

Rope pulling

 

This is a new game I only came up with a year ago. 2 kids hold the same rope with 4 hands. They can't see anything and have to move the rope in the direction the teacher or another child tells them. If I say "arriba", an then both lift the rope up, they both keep playing. But if I say "abajo", and only one moves it down while the other one is moving it right/left/or lifting it up, there will be a "conflict", one child will be slightly pulled aside and the kids find this very funny. The person who makes the mistake sits down and picks somebody else for him/her. We used to play this with our eyes open but it was too easy to follow each other. Instead of the rope, I am thinking about handcuffing them next time:-)

 

 

 

Pin the tail on the donkey

 

A popular game for birthday parties: the blindfolded child standing at the whiteboard has to follow the instructions of his/her classmate and find the right place for the donkey's tail. It is a very good activity to practise directions in Spanish, and all the children find it very amusing. I bought my donkey in Asda last year, but before that I had just drawn one on the whiteboard (or better: asked a child to do it:-) and just used blu tack to stick on a paper tail.

 

 

Robots

 

Pair work: One pupil is the robot, the other one is the instructor who has to tell the robot how to move. Children love being robots and they can imitate them so well.

 



 

Arriba y abajo: by Los pimpollos

 

These puppets from Peru are the joy of my life. I absolutely love listening to their songs on youtube. We sing several of their songs, they have good ones on food, music, washing hands, etc. This is called "Arriba y abajo" and we sing it with actions. The song is subtitled which is great because it is really fast. We reach up and bend down, draw the sun in the sky with our hands, we pretend to be birds and ants, etc. It cheers everybody up:-)!

 

 

 

 

Izquierda, derecha by Los Pimpollos

 

Another one by Los Pimpollos, this time we practise "left" and "right".