Theme - Game Theme

Board Game Theme

*Welcome Banner: Use a computer program like Print Shop to make a banner for your wall that says "Get in the game of learning in ___ grade!" and put game related graphics all around the message.

*Welcome Board: Make paper dice and put one students name on each circle of the dice. Put the dice all around the board with the message "Rolling into a new school year!" or "Look who's rolling into Ms. ____'s room!"

*First Day Project: Give each student a puzzle piece to decorate (cut apart a piece of posterboard). Put back together, laminate, and put up the message "We all fit in!" for a year round room decoration.

*Ceiling Decorations: Use posterboard and make large two sided game pieces...dominoes, checkers, chess pieces, sorry game pieces, silver monopoly pieces, or even giant 3-dimensional dice. You could hang these all around at varying heights to catch students attention.

*Homeworkopoly: (www.homeworkopoly.com) Use this to give students an incentive for doing homework.

*Behavior Management (Classroom Goal): Make giant scrabble letters out of construction paper to spell out a certain word (like RECESS). Post these on a board and each time the class earns a compliment, add a letter. When they earn all letters they get some free time.

*Student Desk Nametags: Make game themed tags for scrabble by creating the letters inside boxes with a little a number in the corner (you could make these with Print Shop or Microsoft Word) OR Make Monopoly themed tags that are the little property cards that say things like "William's Place" or "Sarah Avenue"

*Board Clip Magnets: Make magnets for your board by using clothespins, old gamepieces, and plain magnets. Glue one to two large magnets to the back of a clothespin. You could even paint the clothespins different colors if you want. Then glue various game pieces on the fronts of the clothepins. Checkers, chess pieces, Sorry pieces, old puzzle pieces, etc. would work well.

*Fabric: Use game related fabric with dice on it, or game pieces to cover some of your bulletin boards. I have seen monopoly fabric and other popular games.

*Bulletin Board Border: Tape some old Monoploy money together end to end and laminate it for a bulletin board border.

*Window Clings: Create game themed window clings by printing out clip-art of board games on printable window clings. (http://www.clubinventit.com/products/decorations.asp)

*Good Work Board: "Winning Work!" Put up a solid color background with a border and print out small pictures of games (You can get free clip art at MSN Clip Art Gallery) and glue dice onto clothepins, and work can be clipped up as it is chosen for the board.

*Behavior Management (Individual) Get a large pocket chart and ask a local airline or casino to donate playing cards. Give each student an Ace, 2,3,4,5 or whatever sequence you choose. Each student has five cards in their pocket in order. For each infraction, they flip a card to the next level. It can easily be reset at the end of the day. "Play a Winning Hand and Make Good Behavior Choices!"

*Reward Coupons: Create some classroom money for students to earn for good behavior (not switching levels) or earn through homeworkopoly, etc. You could give them a game theme by using monopoly money, call them tokens, or give them a creative name tied to your name, for example, if your name were Ms. Porter, call them "Porter Points"

*Operation Reward: Keep this small board game on your desk to use as a reward. When asking a tough question, or catching a student being good, let them have a chance to "operate" and if they get the piece out successfully, give them a treat like a jolly rancher or an extra credit point.

*Classroom Jobs: Make a large black and white chess board and make a chess piece for every student with their name on it. Put the jobs on the squares of the chess board and students names can be rotated around the board to switch jobs. Title: "CHECK MATE! We help out!"

*Reading corner/library area: Line the walls with blue paper, and make some trees and pictures similar to that on the "game of life" board. Use the same colors as they do on the cover of the box, PINK-BLUE-GREEN-ORANGE where they spell out LIFE and spell out R-E-A-D instead. Message: "Reading is a fun part of the game of life!" or "When you read, you always win!" For an incentive board for this area, make a little paper car for every student and line them up on the wall, for every book read, move the car a desginated space.

I just started a list of board games:

One of these could be for your behavior system if you were going to use one.... maybe battleship (ceratin number of hits on the ship) or the game of Life?

Aggravation - quiet space, if a student is feeling frustrated?

Risk - an area for "challenge" activities/anchor activities for when students are finished?

Guess Who - if you do mystery readers? this one would be good!

Mastermind - if you have a bulletin board with honoring great samples of school work?

Trivial Pursuit - Question of the Day?

Pictionary - an area of class pictures? of the students or ones they made?

Candy Land -?
Spy Alley - ?
Backgammon - ?
Battleship - ?
The Game of Life - ?
Shoots and Ladders - ?

Okay, this is all I could think of for right now... Good luck!:)

Maybe you could somehow use the game "Sorry!" for behavior. From what I remember of the game you don't want to land on/draw the card that says "Sorry", so that could be the final step in the discipline plan. The jobs/helpers could be like a wheel on "Wheel of Fortune". The "wheel" could have the names of the jobs, or the names of students, and the title for the board could be made to look like the letters that Vanna turns. (green background, white rectangle squares w/black capital letters)

Last year I found this bb idea on the internet. I put it on the bulletin board outside my classroom. It read...A new "twist" to a new year! Then I hung up a Twister board along with little feet and hands that had each students name on them. The kids loved it. Also, I saw the homeworkopoly board idea on the internet too. I changed the idea a little. I made a 'classopoly' board. I used this as a class reward board. Instead of filling a jar to have a class reward, my class had to make it around the classopoly game board to have a class party.

I've never done this, but I loved using homeworkopoly in my classroom last year. It could also be used for a behavior incentive chart. "Welcome to -- grade where we "Connect 4 Learning", or Our --Grade Game of Life"

Check out the fabric section at Wal-Mart, too. They had Monopoly fabric when I was there that would be a great bulletin board background, giant cushy pillow for a reading corner, or reupholster the seat of an old chair.

IDEAS:
Behavior Board: "KEEP A WINNING ATTITUDE" or "WIN THE GAME WITH GOOD CHOICES!" Give each student a set of cards with five green houses on them, 4 houses, 3 houses, etc. for each infraction they lose one "property" Or you could copy and size up five actual properties from the board and store each student's cards in a pocket chart.

Class Reward: Photocopy monopoly money for students.

Reading Corner: Take a Ride on the Reading Railroad!

Decorations: Paint some flower pots and use decoupage glue to attach Monopoly property cards (Scan and print out so you don't have to use the real ones)

Put a big red arrow on your door that says "PASS GO: COLLECT KNOWLEDGE!"

Ceiling: Cut posterboard into squares and put black dots to make dice. Dangle from the ceiling. Maybe you could find those fuzzy dice to.

Travelling pet project: Print out that little Monopoly man and mail him all around the country.

Wall Decorations: Print out scanned pics of the property cards enlarged a bit and put all over your walls (scattered). You could even change the names by gluing new names over the top like "REsponsibility Place" or "Caring Avenue"

Hope this helps!

How about of using the game 'Guess Who?' Kids love this game, and you could change it for any subject! Except, it could be guess the number, math equation, or weather element. Anything could be applied to this!

Some other games you could consider using are hangman or scrabble.

I changed my door to say "Attitude: Its How You Play The Game" and hung playing cards on the door. I'm going to get all the kids to sign it the first day!

I did a very basic game theme this year with my kids. I did have he twister board that i used for my behavior chart. Each student had a colored circle and when they got their clip moved then i would move it accordingly on our campus behavior system chart. I also had my math board set up with the Math Is More Fun Than A Barrel of Monkeys and had monkey boarder and little monkeys from the game around it. I used the homeworkopoly as one of my games as well. Scrabble for the word wall is a great one as well. Clue was used in my science area with a mystery dog bulletin board set. My 5th graders had fun the first day of school trying to identify the different games.

We're using this in our great room with the caption "Knowledge is the name of the game." I can't wait to see what people post!

I did a board game theme last year in my classroom. Here are a few things that I did:

1. name plates on desks- scrabble holders and tiles (I spelled their name out with scrabble tiles and printed a tile tray holder. Then I was able to have them practice different math skills by telling them to get on line by whose name added up to different amounts)

2. Guess Who- My introduction for the year was Guess Who is in Ms. Holmes' Class. I made a large guess who board out of poster board, I then took the kids pictures on the first day and placed it up there as well.

3. Game of Life- My student teacher made a job chart that had to do with the Game of Life. She just used regular poster board with pockets that had the job names on it. However, all the kids names were on cars and it said doing our job in the game of life or something like that.

4. Sorry- My classroom behavior management was the game of sorry. The pawn started on the start section and every time they got a compliment from another person we moved the game piece up. After 10 compliments, they reached home and were rewarded with a fun friday activity.

5. Nintendo Gameboys- my labels for their coat and bookbag hooks were Nintendo gameboys. I printed a picture off line and wrote their names on the screens.

I also had Homeworkopoly and I can't remember anything else at the moment but I go back next week and will write you if there is anything else.

I have used Monopoly as the organizational tool for my writer's workshop. I call it Writopoly. The prompts are written on cards similar to the real estate cards. For places on the board, I use names of local places. The board is created on green paper. Each student is given a token to move around the board so that I can monitor their progress. I hope that this helps you.

Boggle bulletin board is similar to the game boggle. You take 20 pieces of white paper, about 10 in. by 5 in. (the size of paper depends on how much space you have).

On each piece of paper you write a letter from the alphabet. You arrange the 20 white squares in the shape of a large square.

Students take a piece of paper and try to create words out of the bulletin board. You can set a timer or not. I usually let the students decide. You can make up your own rules as to what order the letters have to be arranged.

I usually say that the letters have to be touching to create the word. But as the students play more, I pretty much let them create their own rules.

This can be played in groups or partners. Each group, individual, or partner set tries to spell the most words.

The students really enjoy this game.

I hope this makes sense.

I had a brainstorm the other day and thought of a neat idea for motivating students to read AR books and take tests. I was thinking of making a gameboard similar to the homeworkoply gameboard and call it ARopoly instead. The students would get to roll the dice each time they read and took a test on an AR book. I think this would really motivate the students to read. I actually made my board for the game the other day and it looks pretty good. Go to the website listed above and look at the Homeworkopoly game for an idea what it looks like. I haven't actually filled in each of the spaces on the board yet, but I was planning to make a "GO" space and let the students collect 5 dolphin dollars when they pass go,in the next corner it will say "Catch a ride on the school bus" (instead of go to jail), the students would then go to the corner square diagonally across the board, it would be the school bus( they would pick a mystery prize), in the other corner they would receive 5 minutes computer time while other students were working. I will also put other various rewards around in different squares on the gameboard. My mom had an idea of using names of books instead of street names on each space, so I may do that. I've never done this before so I don't know how well it will work but I think it will motivate the students. I think this post may be really confusing but if you don't understand just ask. How to the website above and it explains homeworkopoly really well and then you can probably think of ideas from that. If you think of any let me know.

How about "Read for Life" "Check into Reading" for checkers. "Reading Helps Set the Trap" or some other catchy phase for Mouse Trap. Instead of PS2 (Play Station) you could have a "Reading Station" I know this isnt a board game but they do love to play this. Don't be Sorry---Read! for the game of Sorry. If you went to yard sales you might be able to get lots of old games to display around the room.
I think this idea is very clever, and it is very approperate for 5 and 6th grades. Good luck