Most of us must have heard the word “abacus”. If not, it’s the way of doing mathematical calculation using an abacus rod. The abacus rod consists of a rectangular frame with multiple rods. Each rod consists of beads, which are moved up and down, with the help of the index and the thumb finger. As students move on to the higher levels, abacus learning process become monotonous. To make the whole thing more interesting and captivating, many other games can be introduced. Some of them are given below :
Related word finding – Show a picture and ask the students to note down all the words they can related to it.
For example :
The words : playground, desk, benches, teachers, students, bus, books etc.
Draw blindly – Students are made to sit in pairs, back to back and one of them is given a picture. He/ she has to describe it without specifying the name of the things and the other student has to draw it by listening to the description.
Word Chain – Teacher says a word and pass it on the students who would then be saying another word starting with the last alphabet of that word the teacher said.
Example : abacus – sun – nurse – elephant – train
Word generator – Students are given a word. They have to make as many others words as possible with the alphabets in the given words.
For example - The word is “PLAYGROUND’.
The generated words list – play, lay, pay, ground, round, pound, run, young, pray etc….
Narrating Story – (a sentence each) – Teacher starts the story by saying the first sentence and one by one the children need to add one sentence each to it.
For example : Teacher : Once there lived a king named Richard.
Student : He was very strong and powerful.
Next student : He had many horses and elephants.
Next student : ………. like this each student adds their on imaginary sentences and continues…….
Complete the sentence – Teacher makes two sentences with a blank. Each child has to fill the blank with a word starting from the first alphabet and the next student continuing it with the consecutive alphabets.
For example : Teacher : We are planning to go to the ___________________.
We would be taking ____________ with us.
First Student : We are planning to go to the airport.
We would be taking apricot with us.
Second Student : We are planning to go to the beach.
We would be taking biscuits with us.
Object Describing – Teacher assembles many objects on the table and each student has to make a relevant sentence using any one object.
For example :First student : My father likes having hot cup of tea while doing his office work.
Second student : An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
Third student : I like having lemon juice after my workout.
Fourth student : Children love to have snacks all the time.
Pretending game – Ask each student to pretend themselves to be someone and tell them to explain about themselves briefly.
For example :
First student : I am a King
Self Introduction : My kingdom name is Astra. I have thousands of soldiers in my army. I fought many wars and won it. ……………………………..
Second student : I am an Abacus Instructor
Self Introduction : I like teaching abacus. It’s very interesting and make math calculation very easy for students.
Tongue twister : Teacher says a tongue twister and each student has to repeat it and if possible can add new one and other students repeat the same.
For example : If two witches were watching two watches, which witch would watch which watch?
Name Game : Teacher says a group and the students have to say maximum words related to the given group.
For example : Group is ------ Parts of our body
Words are : head, ear, eyes, hand, nose etc
Group is ------- Market place
Words are : vegetables, hawkers, tents, pavement, baskets, rope, street lights etc.