UK schools are back now (but in our neck of the woods many stayed open to teach vulnerable children).We have suspended our daily lockdown activity, but we are keeping the page so that colleagues can continue to draw on these activities to send home. Thank you colleagues for spreading the word and getting the activities to parents and carers. Please continue to feed back and please send any activities you make for us to add to ours and share.

 

London 1817: role play on shopkeepers from the East End.

Become an upholder, a mute, a snuff man, a tallow man; make wedding rings or Venetian blinds.

 

Scroll down for earlier postings! Something here for all ages and stages! Contact us if you have a particular topic you would like us to cover.

We offer here many free paper based games and role play activities that encourage, scaffold and inform quality talk between teachers, parents and children in class and at home. Our offer we hope will supplement other online offers, fill up the hours when online is not accessible and introduce more fun and purposeful playful talk into the at home school day. Playful is not the opposite of serious! Some of the most significant and memorable learning takes place when teachers and children talk together and when children talk with their parents. Many years later adults can still remember these learning events!

 

 

Here is a note that we have written for parents, which we hope teachers will find useful to copy or rework and send home together with a selection of games

and game like activities. We also hope that these games will inspire children with their parents and siblings to invent new versions. Please share them with your teachers, peers and us! We welcome your feedback and would be grateful if you could spread the word about our activities on social media.

 

We are loading from the top now to save excess scrolling fatigue for regular visitors. There are now forty to fifty games on this page. We aim to add one or two more daily. If you browse in our activities pages, you will find many more games and be one step ahead of us. Do you like making learning games? We'd love to see them and share them with everyone. Thanks for the feedback colleagues! Good to see the talk parcels are going out with the food parcels.

 

Our project does not have a loud strident voice, but has been sustained by teachers working together to put talk at the centre of learning in multilingual classes since the 1960s; usually with either opposition, accidental support or neglect on the part of government. "Small circles and quiet processes." (James Britton)

Role play on artefacts from Viking history.

Runestones, knarrs. blubber, skyr and lots of other Viking artefacts.

 

Become a zebra or a bear or....and play lotto.

We have lots of lotto games and storyprops for early years role play.

 

Back in time to become Yorkshire children.

You might be interested in researching children's lives in a neighbourhood near you a hundred or two hundred years ago.

 

This activity will, we hope turn you into a creator!

Here is a chance to become a mythical character!

 

Our role play activities invite your participation in rewording, rephrasing and resentencing!

Here is the healthy exercise role play which has turned up again after running round the block!

 

Our role play activities can be done by very young or very old!

We were going to post healthy exercise role play, but it's run off somewhere so here is the rare chance to become a carrot!

 

 

Our role play activities can be done close up or with social distancing!

We have character cards for a lot of Mr S's plays.We need more. Please step up!

 

Our role play activities can be done outside or inside, walking, sitting or jumping!

We would love other versions of this activity involving other characters.

 

Meeting metals. Our role play activities can be done outside!

We would love other versions of this activity. Salts? Acids? Organs? Cells?

 

 

Punctuation games.

Sounds the same? Homo...phones, nyms and graphs

 

 

Egyptian quiz.

Anglo Saxon crime and punishment simulation.

 

Track game to unlock a poem?

And getting your pens (or brushes) round haiku.

 

 

Are you magnetic?

What's a useful use of non friction?

 

Language games to tickle

your creativity and scaffold purposeful. empowering talk.

 

Developed nearly forty years ago -

still creating purposeful. empowering talk.

 

How well do you know Macbeth?

Dogberry wants to impress with long words but makes mistakes.

Counters or milk bottle tops?

Become a talking vegetable and tell others how healthy you are.

Visit the Red List. Read about animals in danger.

Share your information in role!

 

Old and New House Barrier Game

Victorian Toys

Four games here!

Rainforest Adaption Connect Four

 

Illustrating Leisure Activities

a game with a big space for your input!

Transport Barrier Games

 

Rainforest Quiz Game

 

 

Coast Dominoes

Click on our Geography icon for more games and activities

 

Glaciers Dominoes

 

 

Cops and Robbers

 

Harry and the Robots Track Game

 

Maths Bingo

 

Ratio Connect Four Game

 

Aztec Education

Aztec Tributes Game

Medieval Snakes and Ladders

Catch the Plague

How we dealt with pandemic 800 years ago

 

Properties of Numbers Connect Four

Rapid Division Chatterboxes

 

Dinosaurs and Underpants

Giant Turnip from Mantra books.

 

Greek roots.

Matching crimes and alibis.

 

Connectives with aliens.

Spelling vowel sounds game

 

Matilda.

Survival game for carnivores and herbivores

 

Goodnight Mr Tom.

Journey to the River Sea.
Do you have games around popular fiction that you would like to share with our network? We'd love to see them and share them!
Mined from the first lockdown is our popular Hodgeheg game.
Hi Roman Soldier! Are you ready to march? Our Signa Inferte game.
All our Early Years activities are available during lockdown. Here's our teacher's manual.
Here is Naughty Bus.
A drum! A drum. Macbeth today!
And Romeo and Juliet.
Biology today! Become a blood corpusle and meet your playground animals!
We think literacy is the servant of oracy. If you can't talk it through you won't find it easy to write about it.
This one teachers can do first! Lots of mistakes on social media!
Too much preoccupation with literacy can lead to neglect of talk!? Quality talk creates quality writing.
Pairs and lotto, is based on a book that is out of print but we have given you everything you need.
Next a maths colouring in activity on decimals that encourages creative drawing.
Number three will inspire you (we hope) to invent creative names for collections of things
How dirty can you get? Learn about what makes you ill.
This will help you remember capital cities. Help us make another game like this!
Everything decays, or does it? We'd love to see your versions of this game.
Everyone loved our plurals machine so we have borrowed it back from Lockdown One
A new president for our US friends. Here's a game about a very previous one.
Our Holes Connect Four game.
Pairing Superheroes and predicaments.

Not quite a game, but more a joint problem solving activity that needs at least two brains.

From the eighties but very popular since many of the things that killed you then kill you now, but we'd love a modern version.

January comes the snow; makes the feet and fingers glow.

Can you think of a poem that can become a game?

A little bundle of maths games.

We also recommend the Nrich site for more super games.

WW2 air raid connect four game.

Famous paintings Bingo Game.

 

Shakespeare today! Use your discretion with the rude words activity!

Teachit have these activities online in word if you want to edit them.

 

There are now fifty plus games on this page. We aim to add one or two more daily. If you browse in our activities pages, you will find many more games and be one step ahead of us. Do you like making learning games? We'd love to see them and share them with everyone else. Please tell us the games you like best.

 

Below you will find all the activities we floated past you during the first lockdown. The last is first. If you want to relive! the first lockdown go to the bottom and work up!

 

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Last Lockdown Activity, but we hope you come back to visit. An Indian short story for you to tell in your own way and your own words.

Click on picture on left to access the full activity.

 

 

 

 

Linking Vikings to Britain's history. This activity invites your biographies.

Click on picture on left to access the full activity.

 

 

Next stage of our Viking week. Even more role cards with shorter captions.

Click on picture on left to access the full activity.

There is a strong argument for teaching Viking history at all ages, making a visit every year.

 

 

 

Next stage of our Viking week. More role cards! Bone up on an artefact, get in role and delight your family and friends with your expertise.

Click on picture on left to access the full activity.

There is a strong argument for teaching Viking history at all ages, making a visit every year.

 

 

 

Next stage of our Viking week. Role cards! Bone up on a date, get in role and shock your family and friends with your expertise. Make the mini books!

Click on picture on left to access the full activity.

There is a strong argument for teaching Viking history at all ages, making a visit every year.

 

 

Do you like Board Games? Play our Vikings game and help us improve it. We are planning a Viking week.

Click on picture on left to access the full activity.

 

Get in role. Become a mythical character from ancient Greece and introduce yourself.

Click on picture on left to access the full activity.

 

Talking about Feelings.

You can add extra words.

 

Click on picture on left to access the full activity.

 

 

It's Superworm!

Three Games.

Click on picture on left to access the full activity.

 

investigating spelling rules. Discover the words that refuse to behave.

Click on picture on left to access the full activity.

 

A way to begin to understand the smallness of small things.

Click on picture on left to access the full activity.

 

Become a rich Roman and make your choices.

Click on picture on left to access the full activity.

 

Acting out connectives.

Click on picture on left to access the full activity.

 

Cowels and Vonsanants.

Click on picture on left to access the full activity.

 

Air Raid Connect Four for VE day.

Click on picture on left to access the full activity.

 

Maths again and three levels of difficulty.

Click on picture on left to access the full activity.

 

Crafty Mimes!

Welcome to the Middle Ages! Rehearse a mime and test it out on your family.

Click on picture on left to access the full activity.

 

Cinco de Mayo!

Here is a chance to virtually visit Mexico.

Click on picture on left to access the full activity.

 

Cinco de Mayo!

Here is a lot more information where things and people talk about themselves.

Click on picture on left to access the full activity.

 

Maths you tell us are the activities you like best. Here's a track game which you can easily draw on paper if you can't print our version.

If you haven't got a die you can notch a pencil or put paper numbers in a tin. In the last case you can add bigger numbers or even put minus numbers in! Click on picture on left to access the full activity.

 

 

Here is the link to all our maths activities!

Click on picture on left to access the full list.

 

How much? How many?

This activity does not need printing out.

Try doing it by calling out the items.

 

 

Click on picture on left to access the full activity.

 

Rapid Addition Chatterboxes.

Why not make a difficult one to try out on parents or carers or brothers or sisters!

 

 

Click on picture on left to access the full activity.

 

Rhyming Dates Pairs Game.

Challenge is finding worse rhymes than these!

 

 

Click on picture on left to access the full activity.

 

In this activity you have to bid for paintings to fill your bingo board art gallery. You need to ask the whole family to play.

 

 

Click on picture on left to access the full activity.

 

Here is a chance to use all the interesting descriptive words you mined yesterday to write Haikus.

Click on picture on left to access the full activity.

 

 

An invitation to play a Connect Four Game and then make your own version.

Click on picture on left to access the full activity.

 

 

 

 

We have drafted a resource summary for Connect Four.

Click on picture on left to access a bigger version. Other resource summaries below

 

 

Mental Maths Boards which can easily be constructed and you can devise your own.

Click on picture on left to access his website.

 

 

And a card version of the boards activity.The theme is microbes of different colours.

Click on picture on left to access his website.

 

 

 

 

We took a little rest on Sunday and offered you a dip into Colin West's poetry book.

Click on croc on left to access his website.

 

 

Staying with the nineteenth century here are games to play and to make your own.

Click on picture on left to access the activity.

 

 

To help remind you what school was like, here is a sorting game about schools now and schools in the 19th century

Click on picture on left to access the activity.

 

 

 

23rd April Extra Activity!

Happy Birthday Will!

A blockbusters game to test each the other on Midsummer Night's Dream and general Shakespeare knowledge.

Click on picture on left to access the activity.

 

 

A chance to make the longest and most ingenious energy chain.

And illustrate it. We are certain you can do better than our artist.

 

Click on picture on left to access the activity.

 

 

All previous daily activities are down the page.

All a virus wants to do is turn you into a billion copies of it.

Our sorting activity puts you in the head (if it had a head) of a virus.

 

Click on picture on left to access the activity.

 

 

We are still working on our virus related activities so it you would like to add more cards and pictures please contribute!

 

 

 

Extra for National Tea Day! 21st April!

 

Click on picture on left to access the activity.

 

 

We want you to choose a favourite book and make a track game.

Click on picture on left to access our little information booklet.

 

 

Here is an example from our collection. This book is popular across the age range.

 

 

We have reached No 18! Education is conversation and some of the best dialogue takes place when producing your own versions of a game.

Click on picture on left to access full activity.

 

 

 

Would you like to make your own seasons connect game to try out with those you know well and then send to us?

 

 

 

Is it time to invent a new superperson? Or are human beans better?

Click on picture on left to access full activity.

 

 

Here are the bare bones of a creepy story! Would you like to flesh it out

Click on picture on left to access full activity.

 

 

 

 

Five times four possible plots!

 

 

 

 

Float in a sea of chatter and improve your mental maths!

Click on picture on left to access full activity.

 

 

A super opportunity to draw some aliens and get the spelling of there or their right. And a bingo game!

Click on picture on left to access full activity.

 

 

Share your aliens and their belongings!

 

Become rainforest animals and introduce yourselves in role.

Click on picture on left to access full activity.

 

 

Giant Turnip Games from Mantra's version of the story available on their website in many languages.

Click on picture on left to access full activity.

 

 

Pairs and Bingo games

How do you play these musical instruments?

Can you make your own musical instrument gameboard? Click on picture on left to access full activity.

 

 

Time for some imaginative similes. Here's a game to remember the old ones.

Can you think what might be better than warm as toast or crafty as fox? Click on picture on left to access full activity.

 

 

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Too Many Apostrophes!

This activity can be played as it is. but we hope it will inspire you to write sentences full of apostrophes.

Click on picture on left to access full activity.

 

 

Too Many Apostrophes!

Have a go at writing your own sentences that need a lot of apostrophes and then try making sentences where you can add too many to try out for the game.

 

 

 

Neutralisation Rules

This activity is easy to copy out if you don't have a printer and can be extended by adding more substances.

 

 

Neutralisation Rules

We thought that even if you don't have access to printing, it is fairly straightforward to produce a hand crafted version of this activity.

Ideally we planned for pairs to compete with other pair because it produced more talk but two can play of course if there are only two of you to play.

Has anyone considered trying out our activities on Zoom? We wish Voice21 well experimenting here and look forward to seeing the results of their work.

 

 

 

Seacoast and/or Mountains

This activity can be played with or without an Atlas.

This activity can be opened by clicking on the picture on the left.

Seacoast or Mountains

We thought that even if you don't have access to printing, it is fairly straightforward to produce a hand crafted version of this activity. You can choose your own countries.

Ideally we planned for pairs to compete with other pair because it produced more talk but two can play of course if there are only two of you to play.

Has anyone considered trying out our activities on Zoom? We wish Voice21 well experimenting here.

 

 

 

Dirty Bertie Track Game

With the current emphasis on hygiene would you like to improve on our Dirty Bertie Track Game.

We need a better track and more dirty and/or clean cards.

Click on the title page on the left to see our very basic Dirty Bertie Track Game

 

 

 

 

We made Mini Books

You are invited to make and then write and illustrate a mini book.

Click on the title page on the left to see our Bash Street Pets mini books.

You need to be very accurate in folding and cutting to produce a tidy mini book. There is a bigger template on the activity page.

 

 

An Introduction to Open Ended Dominoes.

This activity invites you to try out making your own open ended domino activity similar to Steve's.

You are invited to construct your own open ended domino activity. Choose a topic It can be a something physical or mental. Brainstorm the vocabulary then write the words on dominoes.

Click on the title page on the left if you want to download the complete activity.

 

You will find other open ended examples on our website and here is our resource summary.The hope and plan is that you will think up lots of unexpected and creative arguments to link your dominoes and then argue constructively with the other players

Please send us your versions.

 

 

Scroll down for earlier activities

You may decide you need a magnet for this activity.

The boldest go forward without one since you can always check your guesses later.

You are going to construct your own game board like the one below or if you can find real objects that are small enough you can lay them out in a game board formation on the floor or table

Click on the title page on the left if you want the complete activity to download.

 

Make a game board like the one on the left by drawing objects or just writing their names. Make two or more different coloured sets of mini cards/paper scraps with M for magnetic on some and N for nonmagnetic written on others.

Players take different coloured mini card sets. Mix and Shuffle your mini cards. Place them face down. Players take turns to pick a card from their mini pile and place it on a correct place on the board. First player to get four of their mini cards in a row in their colour is the winner.

You may want to make a bigger board which makes the game last longer. The downloadable board is twice the size. If you are using real objects rather than pictures and you have a magnet you can easily check your guesses so there won't be a need for an adjudicator!

 

 

 

Welcome to the Unfortunately, Fortunately Storytelling Framework.

These stories can go on and on. Optimistists stop at fortunately, pessimists don't. Illustrations are optional but fun. Send us your stories!

Click on the title page on the left the complete activity

 

 

Work in pairs. Both of you decide a topic for your story. Write the first line on a sheet of paper and then exchange your stories. Write an unfortunate event for the story and exchange again. Write a fortunate event and exchange again and so on until you decide to stop or just can't go any further.

 

 

 

Burglar Bill inspired this activity which is a Connect Three game of asking questions about a book. Choose a book and pick two characters from it.

Click on the book cover for the whole set of activiies for BB.

 

Thinking about using it for Noughts and Crosses, Bleak House or Tess of the d'Urbervilles??

Make a gameboard for your book and a set of mini cards for your two characters. This can of course be very basic or you can spend time on it and produce brilliant drawings.

To play the game you take turns to ask each other questions about your book. If you get your question right (without looking at the book!) you can put one of your mini cards on the board. The first player to get three of their cards in a row is the winner.

Please send us your versions!

 

 

We put this activity as nought because we counted backwards incorrectly!

This book by Anna-Maria Mclean is an animal alphabet published in 2016, but now quite difficult to find. The paintings are spectacular. Here are two examples to inspire you to produce your own alliterative alphabet for animals or for anything else you think up.

Please send us any of your activities or links to them. We also welcome pictures to liberate us from clip art.

Want to help us develop new activities? Go to our Work in Progress page.

 

Start here and scroll up for first lockdown activities!

 

Thank you everyone who is helping us with these activities. A big thank you for your feedback!