Friday, November 19, 2010

Scripture Mastery Games: Alphabet Race

A seminary teacher friend of mine shared this game with me, and I tried it out today with my kids. It was fun! She said that she has a friend who knows the man who developed "Apples to Apples", and he came up with this game. I had to adapt it a little for my class, but it worked pretty well.
Here's how you make the game:
--Buy sticky magnetic sheets at Walmart. (craft section) I think I paid $1.99
--On your computer, print out the letters of the alphabet, leaving space between each letter. Make sure to make it a big font so that each letter is at least 2 inches high. You could also just draw them by hand on a piece of paper.
--Cut out the letters, leaving a little bit of edge to them. They should be about 2" X 1" big.
--Peel back the paper from the back of the magnet sheet. It is a sticky surface.
--Carefully place the alphabet letters on the sticky side of the magnet, overlapping if needed so that no sticky surface is showing. Two sheets come in a package and that should be enough for the entire alphabet.
--Cut out each individual letter, making sure no sticky surface is showing.
--On your chalkboard, draw 9 columns.
--In the middle column, place the alphabet magnets in order going down the board.
--Above the columns on the right side, write the name of Team 1
--Above the columns on the left side, write the name of Team 2
--Give a scripture mastery clue to see which team goes first.
--The person who gets it first gets to start the game off by giving the first scripture mastery clue.
--I found it took too much time to let them choose their own scripture, so I used the scripture mastery cards to flip to one and gave it to them to use in giving their clue.
--They pick one of the letters on the board, and give a one or two word clue that starts with that letter. For example, if I had chosen the scripture D&C 82:10, "I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise." The student might choose to use the word "bound" as a clue. They would first say, "I'm choosing to use the letter B. The clue is "Bound"."
--Whichever team finds the scripture first, gets to move the letter B magnet to the first column on their side of the board.
--The student who found the scripture first gets to give the next clue.
--As play continues, the letter B might be used again, and if the same team gets the clue first, it moves to the next column on their side. When it moves to the last column, that letter is out of play.
--If the other team gets the "B" scripture first, the "B" then moves one column in the direction of that team on the board.
--Students may strategize and choose to use certain letters so that they can hopefully move it toward their team's last column
--At the end of the game, the team with the most letters on their last column are the winners. We adapted this because we never were able to move a letter to the last column of either team. So we decided that the team with the most letters on their side of the board was the winner.
This game can be adapted in many ways. For example, my friend had the kids give names of different missions of the church. Or you could have them give the names of different temples. It's a fun activity to bring attention in a lesson. Have fun!

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