Grab it!

Ask the children to sit in a circle with their hands behind their backs. Place some realias or flashcards in the middle of the circle. Call out an object and let the children race to find and touch it. Arrange the children into teams and award points to the winners.

Drawing race

Arrange the class in two teams and invite a child from each team to the front of the class. Whisper a vocabulary word to each child and ask them to draw a picture of it. The first team to correctly identify the picture gets a point.

Phonics race

Divide the class in several groups. Copy familiar flashcards and provide each group with a set. Call out a consonant sound that the children know. For a given amount of time, let the children put the flashcards that begin with that sound into a pile. Check whether everybody is right.

Chair race

Arrange the class in two teams. Ask each team to line up behind the chair with another one facing it across the room, a few steps away. Ask a child from each team to sit on the chair at the front of their team’s line. Call out an action (jump). Ask the first child of the team to jump across to the other chair. Explain that the first child to reach the team’s chair after doing the right action should sit on it. Award the point to that team.

Stop!

Arrange the class into two teams. Put sets of familiar flashcards into a large bag along with a few others on which you have taped the stop sign. Ask the children to reach in and take a card without looking and identify it. Explain that if he/she correctly says the word, his/her team wins a point, but if he/she draws a stop sign, the team loses.