Oral games
Associations
A game for a large company. The presenter leaves the room for a short time, during which time the others decide which of those present they will wish for (this could be the presenter himself). Having returned, the player asks the others questions - what flower do you associate this person with, what vehicle, what part of the body, what piece of kitchen utensils, etc. - to understand who the mystery is. The questions can be very different - this is not limited by anything except the imagination of the players. Since association is an individual matter and an exact match may not happen, it is customary to give the guesser two or three attempts. If the company is small, you can expand the circle of guesses with mutual acquaintances who are not present in the room at that moment, although the classic version of “associations” is still a hermetic game.
Game of P
A game for a group of four people, an interesting variation on the “hat” theme (see below), but not requiring any special accessories. One player thinks of a word for another, which he must explain to the others, but he can only use words starting with the letter “p” (any except those with the same root). That is, the word “house” will have to be explained, for example, like this: “built - I live.” If you couldn’t guess right away, you can throw in additional associations: “building, room, space, the simplest concept...” And at the end add, for example, “Perignon” - by association with Dom Perignon champagne. If the guessers are close to winning, then the presenter will need comments like “approximately”, “approximately”, “almost correct” - or, in the opposite situation: “bad, wait!” Usually, after the word is guessed, the person explaining comes up with a new word and whispers it in the ear of the person who guessed it - he becomes the next leader.
Lectures for children on this topic:
A course of lectures for children about the languages of the world
How many languages are there in the world, how do they differ and how are they similar to each other?
A course of lectures for children about strange and new words in the Russian language
Why do linguists study jargon, filler words and speech errors?
ABC Trim, alphabet enchanté. Illustrations by Bertal. France, 1861 Wikimedia Commons
Say the Same Thing
A fun and fast game for two, which got its name from the video of the inventive rock band OK Go, from which many learned about it (the musicians even developed a mobile application that helps you play it from a distance, although it is currently unavailable). The point of the game is that on the count of one-two-three, each player pronounces a word of his choice. Next, the goal of the players is to, with the help of successive associations, come to a common denominator: the next time, two, three, both pronounce a word that is somehow connected with the previous two, and so on until the desired coincidence occurs. Let's assume that the first player said the word "house" and the second said the word "sausage"; in theory, they can coincide very soon if on the second move, after one-two-three, both say “store.” But if one says “store” and the other says “refrigerator” (why not a house for sausage?), then the game may drag on, especially since it cannot be repeated - neither the store nor the refrigerator will fit anymore, and you will have to figure out, say, "reefer" or "IKEA". If the initial words are far from each other (for example, “curb” and “weightlessness”), then the gameplay becomes completely unpredictable.
Characters
A game for a group (the ideal number of players is from four to ten), requiring from the participants not only good imagination, but also, preferably, a little bit of acting skill. As usual, one of the players leaves the room for a while, and while he is gone, the rest come up with a word, the number of letters in which coincides with the number of participants remaining in the room. Next, the letters are distributed among the players, and a character is invented for each of them (therefore, words that contain “ъ”, “ы” or “ь” are not suitable). Until the word is guessed, the players behave in accordance with the chosen character - the presenter’s task is to understand exactly what characters his partners are portraying and restore the hidden word. Let's imagine, for example, that a company consists of seven people. One leaves, the rest come up with the six-letter word “old man” and distribute roles among themselves: the first, say, will be with the indoor one, the second will be patient , the third will be secondary, the fourth be cordial, the fifth will the mane, and the sixth will be with the ovarian. The returning player is greeted by a cacophony of voices - their roles until they are solved, and the presenter asks the players questions that help reveal their character. The only condition is that as soon as the presenter pronounces the correct character - for example, guesses the insidious one - he must admit that his incognito has been revealed and announce the number of his letter (in the word “old man” - sixth).
ABC Trim, alphabet enchanté. Illustrations by Bertal. France, 1861 Wikimedia Commons
Find out the song
A game for a group of four to five people. The leader leaves, and the remaining players choose a well-known song and distribute its words among themselves - a word to each. For example, the song “Let there always be sun” is made: one player gets the word “let”, the second - “always”, the third - “there will be”, the fourth - “sun”. The presenter returns and begins to ask questions - very different and unexpected: “What is your favorite city?”, “Where does the Volga flow?”, “What to do and who is to blame?”. The task of the respondents is to use their word in the answer and try to do it so that it does not stand out too much; You need to answer quickly and not at too much length, but not necessarily truthfully. The answers to the questions in this case could be, for example, “It’s difficult for me to choose one city, but let it be Rio de Janeiro today” or “The Volga flows into the Caspian, but this does not always happen, every third year it flows into the Black” . The presenter must figure out which word is the odd one out in the answer and guess the song. They often play with lines from poetry rather than songs.
Tip
A game for four people, divided into pairs (in principle, there can be three or four pairs). The mechanics are extremely simple: the first player from the first pair whispers a word (common noun in the singular) into the ear of the first player from the second pair, then they take turns calling out their associations with this word (in the same form - common nouns; cognate words cannot be used ). After each association, the teammate of the player who voiced it names his word, trying to guess whether it was the one that was originally thought of, and so on until the problem is solved by someone; at the same time, all associations already heard in the game can be used in the future, adding one new one at each move. For example, let there be players A and B on one team, and C and D on the other. Player A whispers the word “old man” into player C’s ear. Player C says "age" out loud to partner D. If D immediately answers “old man,” then the pair C and D have earned a point, but if he says, for example, “youth,” then the turn goes to player A, who, using the word “age” suggested by C (but discarding the irrelevant to the case “youth” from D), says to his partner B: “age, man.” Now B will probably guess the old man - and his team with A will already score a point. But if he says “teenager” (deciding that we are talking about the age when boys turn into men), then C, who has suddenly returned to action, will say “ age, man, eighty years old,” and here, probably, “old man” will be guessed. In one of the variants of the game, it is also allowed to “shout”: this means that, having suddenly realized what was meant, the player can shout out the option on a wrong turn. If he guessed right, his team will get a point, but if he was too hasty in drawing conclusions, his team will lose a point. They usually play up to five points.
ABC Trim, alphabet enchanté. Illustrations by Bertal. France, 1861 Wikimedia Commons
Ministry of Railways
A game for a large company. Here we are forced to warn readers that after seeing this text in full, you will never be able to drive again - the game is one-time only.
Spoiler →
First, the player who gets to lead leaves the room. Having returned, he must find out what MPS means - all that is known in advance is that the bearer of this mysterious abbreviation is present in the room right now. To find out the correct answer, the driver can ask other players questions, the answers to which should be formulated as “yes” or “no”: “Does he have blond hair?”, “Does he have blue eyes?”, “Is he a man?”, “He in jeans?”, “Does he have a beard?”; Moreover, each question is asked to a specific player, and not to all at once. Most likely, it will become clear quite quickly that the person who meets all the criteria is simply not in the room; Accordingly, the question will arise on what principle the players give answers. “An autopsy” of this principle will help answer the main question - what is MPS. The Ministry of Railways is not the Ministry of Railways at all, but my right- hand neighbor ( that is, each player always describes the person sitting to his right). Another option is KOP, who answered last ( , everyone talks about who answered the previous question).
Contact
A simple game that can be played with a group of three people. One person thinks of a word (noun, common noun, singular) and names its first letter out loud; the others’ task is to guess the word, remembering other words starting with this letter, asking questions about them and checking to see if the leader has guessed it. The presenter’s task is to avoid revealing the next letters in the word to the players for as long as possible. For example, a word starting with the letter “d” is guessed. One of the players asks the question: “Is this by any chance the place where we live?” This is where the fun begins: the presenter must quickly figure out what the player means and say “No, this is not a “house”” (or, if it was a “house”, honestly admit it). But at the same time, other players are thinking about the same thing, and if they understand before the leader that “house” is meant, then they say: “contact” or “there is contact,” and begin to count in unison to ten (while the count is going on, the presenter still has a chance to escape and guess what is being said!), and then the word is called. If at least two of them matched, that is, on the count of ten they said “house” in unison, the leader must reveal the next letter, and the new version of the guessers will already begin with the now known letters “d” + next. If it was not possible to beat the presenter on this question, then the guessers offer a new option. Of course, it makes sense to complicate the definitions rather than ask everything directly - so the question about “home” would be better sounded like “Isn’t it where the sun rises?” (with a reference to the famous song “House of the Rising Sun” by The Animals). Usually, the one who ultimately gets to the searched word (names it or asks a question that leads to victory) becomes the next leader.
ABC Trim, alphabet enchanté. Illustrations by Bertal. France, 1861 Wikimedia Commons
Didactic games in the second early group on the topic “Professions”
Didactic games on the topic: “Professions”
(To develop interest in people of different professions in children of the second early age)
Goal: to continue to expand children’s understanding of various professions, their names and types of activities. To cultivate respect for the work of adults, the desire to choose a profession and the need to work.
"Who does what"
Target. Fix the names of actions performed by people of different professions. Progress of the game. Children take a picture of a person in a certain profession and say what he does. Cook... (cooks food), doctor... (heals people), teacher... (teaches children), builder... (builds houses), artist... (paints pictures), pianist... (plays the piano), writer... (writes books), dressmaker...(sews clothes), laundress...(washes clothes), cleaner...(washes floors), salesman...(sells goods), photographer...(takes pictures of people), teacher...(raises children), driver...(drives a train), controller ...(checks tickets), etc.
“Who knows more professions”
Target. Teach children to correlate the actions of people with their profession, to form corresponding verbs from nouns (builder - builds, teacher - teaches, etc.). Progress of the game. Educator. I work at school as a teacher. This is my profession. I teach you to write, read, count, how to behave, play with you, draw, read you poems, stories,... This is my profession - to teach you. What is the profession of...? She is preparing lunch for us. That's right, cook. What other professions do you know? (Answers.) Every adult necessarily learns some profession. Having mastered it, he goes to work and performs certain actions. What does a cook do? (Children: The cook cooks, bakes, fries, peels vegetables.) What does the doctor do? (Examines patients, listens, treats, gives medicine, gives injections, operations.) What does a tailor do? (Cuts, bastes, flogs, irons, tries on, sews.) The teacher names other professions - builder, teacher, shepherd, shoemaker, and the children name actions.
«Professions"
Target. Fix the names of professions and actions that are performed by them. Progress of the game. You ask your child the question: “What does…..?” and name a representative of any profession, and the child answers. At first, it is better to take professions from which the answer follows - a teacher educates, a baker bakes, a janitor cleans. Alternate well-known professions with unfamiliar ones, and at the same time tell about professions unknown to the child. It turns out interesting if you ask in a row “What does a doctor do?”, “What does a veterinarian do?” (make out the difference), and then also “teacher” and “scientist”. Sometimes you hear interesting versions from children.
"Give me a word"
Target. Develop logical thinking, attention, memory; learn to select words to rhyme. Progress of the game. Children suggest words and finish the poem. In the carpenter's bag you will find a hammer and a sharp... (knife). Any tool is available - a plane, and... (a chisel).. We must fight the fire. We are brave workers. We are partners with water. People really need us. So who are we? - ... (firemen). I would definitely want to become a pilot, I would then take a plane to Moscow... (Fly). The pilot lifts into the blue sky... (airplane).. He drove the goats out onto a merry hill... (shepherd boy). But our painter does not come into the house with a brush and bucket: Instead of a brush, he brought a mechanical... (pump). So that people don’t get wet in the rain, the roofer covers... (the house) with iron. White sawdust is flying, flying from under the saw: This is the carpenter making frames and... (floors). Every day a newspaper is brought to our house by... (postman). The roof is being painted in front of the children... (painters). I fly dolls in the morning. Today I... (nurse). It's time to paint the rooms. They invited... (painter). The circus performer knows how to prance, animals and birds... (train). The future cabin boy brought us some southern fish... (sailor).
“Who can’t do without them”
Goal: to consolidate children’s knowledge about materials, tools, equipment needed by people of different professions.
Progress of the game: the teacher shows the children the object, and the children name the profession of the person who needs it. It should be borne in mind that the same items are needed by people of different professions.
“What first, what then?”
Goal: to consolidate children’s knowledge about the sequence of work actions.
Progress of the game: the teacher asks to teach the doll to vacuum cleaner. Asks what needs to be done first, what then (plug in, then press the button, vacuum, press the switch button, pull out the plug from the socket)
. Offer children other work processes.
“What does Masha want to do?”
Goal: to clarify children’s ideas about certain labor actions; about materials, tools and equipment needed for work.
Progress of the game: the teacher addresses the children on behalf of the doll Masha:
- Masha asks me for a basin, a bucket of water and soap.
Submits the objects she calls to the doll.
- What do you think she will do? (wash)
.
Right. And now Masha asks to give her a saucepan, milk, sugar, salt, millet. What is she going to do? (the doll wants to cook porridge)
.
What is the name of the porridge? (millet)
.
Other work activities that require appropriate items can be considered in a playful form. Children are shown these objects; for older children, the teacher uses pictures depicting objects or simply lists these objects without showing illustrations.
"Who needs it"
Goal: to consolidate children’s ideas about objects and their use in labor processes. Introduce professions.
Progress of the game: the teacher shows the children various objects, asks them to name them and tell them when they are used and for what purpose (this is a ladle, the cook needs it to stir porridge, pour soup and compote)
.
"Guess what I'm doing?"
Goal: to expand children’s understanding of labor activities. Develop attention.
Progress of the game: the teacher and children join hands and stand in a circle. A child comes to the center of the circle. Everyone goes in a circle and says:
We don’t know what you’re doing,
Let's take a look and guess.
The child imitates actions not only with movements, but also with sounds (vacuuming the floor, sawing, driving a car, doing laundry, cooking food)
. Children guess the actions.
“Who needs what for work?”
Goal: to teach children to use nouns in speech. h. date case (knife, board, pan, ladle - needed by the cook, etc.)
.
“Name the item that is missing”
Goal: to teach children to select objects by analogy.
The janitor - a shovel, the salesman - a cash register, the doctor - a phonendoscope, the cook - a saucepan, ... .
"Who's doing what?"
Goal: to teach children to select as many verbs as possible for the name of the profession.
What is the doctor doing? What is the cook doing? What is the janitor doing? What does a hairdresser do?
“Guess the profession from the description”
Goal: to teach children to find relevant concepts (cook - cooks; doctor - medicine, white coat, thermometer).
“Which one, which one?”
Goal: expand children’s vocabulary, teach them to select definition words for different types of professions.
What driver? - attentive, strong, focused.
What cook? - dexterous, neat, attentive.
“Correct the mistakes in the sentences”
Goal: to train children in using sentences with the meaning of opposition.
The doctor prepares a delicious lunch for the guys. The cook prepares a delicious dinner, and the doctor treats people.
"I'll start, you continue"
Goal: to train children in using complex sentences.
The doctor treats people so that...
A builder builds houses to... .
A hairdresser cuts people's hair to... .
"Small big"
Goal: to train children in the formation of nouns with a diminutive suffix.
Shovel - shovel, bucket - bucket, ... .
"What comes out of what"
Goal: to train children in forming words by analogy.
Carrot juice - carrot juice; apple jam - apple jam; … .
“Name what’s extra”
Goal: to learn to group objects according to a certain criterion and highlight an extra object.
Rake, shovel, cart, ladle -...? The ladle is superfluous, because the janitor needs a rake, a shovel and a cart, but he doesn’t need a ladle for his work.
Writing games
Encyclopedia
Not the fastest, but extremely exciting game for a company of four people - you will need pens, paper and some kind of encyclopedic dictionary (preferably not limited thematically - that is, the TSB will be better suited than the conventional “biological encyclopedia”). The presenter finds a word in the encyclopedia that is unknown to anyone present (here we can only rely on their honesty - but cheating in this game is uninteresting and unproductive). The task of each player is to write an encyclopedic definition of this word, coming up with its meaning out of their heads and, if possible, disguising the text as a real small encyclopedic article. Meanwhile, the presenter carefully rewrites the real definition from the encyclopedia. After this, the “articles” are mixed and read by the presenter in random order, including the present one, and the players vote for which option seems most convincing to them. Finally, the votes are counted and the points are distributed. Any player receives a point for correctly guessing the real definition and another point for each vote given by other participants to his own version. After this, the sheets are given back and a new word is played out - there should be about 6-10 of them in total. This game can also be played in teams: come up with imaginary definitions collectively. The game “poems” is structured in a similar way - but instead of a complex word, the presenter selects two lines from some little-known poem in advance and invites the participants to complete the quatrains.
Game from Inglourious Basterds
A game for a company of any size, which many knew before the Quentin Tarantino film, but it does not have a single name. Each player comes up with a role for his neighbor (usually it is some famous person), writes it on a piece of paper and sticks the piece of paper on his neighbor’s forehead: accordingly, everyone sees what role everyone has, but does not know who they themselves are. The participants’ task is to use leading questions, the answers to which are formulated as “yes” or “no” (“Am I a historical figure?”, “Am I a cultural figure?”, “Am I a famous athlete?”), to find out who exactly they are. In this form, however, the game exhausts itself quite quickly, so you can come up with completely different themes and, instead of famous people, play, for example, professions (including exotic ones - “carousel driver”, “taxidermist”), film and literary characters (you can mix them with real celebrities, but it’s better to agree on this in advance), in food (one player will be risotto, and the other, say, green cabbage soup) and even just in objects.
ABC Trim, alphabet enchanté. Illustrations by Bertal. France, 1861 Wikimedia Commons
Bulls and cows
A game for two: one participant thinks of a word, and it is agreed in advance how many letters it should contain (usually 4-5). The second's task is to guess this word by naming other four- or five-letter words; if some letters of the named word are in the hidden word, they are called cows, and if they have the same place inside the word, then they are bulls. Let’s imagine that the word “eccentric” is in your mind. If the guesser says “dot”, then he receives the answer from the second player: “three cows” (that is, the letters “ch”, “k” and “a”, which are in both “eccentric” and “dot”, but in different places). If he then says “cob”, he will no longer get three cows, but two cows and one bull - since the letter “a” in both “eccentric” and “cob” is in the fourth position. As a result, sooner or later they manage to guess the word, and the players can change places: now the first one will guess the word and count the bulls and cows, and the second one will name their options and track the extent to which they coincide with the guessed word. You can complicate the process by simultaneously guessing your word and guessing the opponent’s word.
Intelligence
A written game for a group (but can be played by two), consisting of three rounds, each lasting five minutes. In the first, players randomly type thirteen letters (for example, by blindly pointing a finger at a book page) and then make words from them, and only long ones - five letters or more. In the second round, you need to select a syllable and remember as many words as possible that begin with it; you can use words with the same root (for example, if the syllable “house” is chosen, then the words “house”, “domra”, “domana”, “domain” will do). “brownie”, “housewife”, etc.). Finally, in the third round the syllable is taken again, but now you need to remember not ordinary words, but the names of famous people of the past and present in which it appears, and not necessarily at the beginning - that is, both Karamzin and McCartney are suitable for the syllable “kar” , and, for example, Hamilcar. An important detail: since this con provokes the most controversy and cheating, the participants in the game can ask each other to prove that this person is really a celebrity, and here you need to remember at least your profession and country. Typical dialogue: “What, you don’t know Hamilcar? But this is a Carthaginian commander! After each round, points are calculated: if a particular word is the same for all players, it is simply crossed out, in other cases, players are awarded as many points for it as their opponents could not remember it. In the first round, you can also add points for particularly long words. Based on the results of the rounds, you need to determine who took first, second, third and other places, and at the end of the game these places are added up. The goal is to get the smallest number at the output (for example, if you were the winners of all three rounds, then you will get the number 3 - 1+1+1, and you are a champion; it cannot be less mathematically).
ABC Trim, alphabet enchanté. Illustrations by Bertal. France, 1861 Wikimedia Commons
Frame
A game for any number of people, which was invented by one of the creators of the chess program “Kaissa” and the author of the program for finding anagrams, Alexander Bitman. First, players choose several consonants - this will be the frame, the skeleton of the word. Then the time is noted (two to three minutes), and the players begin to “stretch” vowels (as well as “й”, “ь”, “ъ”) onto the frame to form existing words. Consonants can be used in any order, but only once, and vowels can be added in any number. For example, players choose the letters “t”, “m”, “n” - then the words “fog”, “manto”, “mantle”, “coin”, “darkness”, “ataman”, “muteness” and other. The winner is the one who can come up with the most words (as usual, these must be singular common nouns). The game can be played even with one letter - for example, “l”. The words “il”, “bark”, “yula”, “aloe”, “spruce” are formed around it, and if it is agreed that the letter can be doubled - “alley” and “lily”. If the standard “framework” has been mastered, then the task may be to compose an entire phrase with one consonant: a textbook example from the book by Evgeniy Gik - “Bobby, kill the boy and beat the woman at the baobab tree.”
Chain of words
A game for any number of players. Many people know it under the name “How to make a molehill out of a molehill,” and it was invented by the writer and mathematician Lewis Carroll, the author of “Alice.” The “chain” is based on metagram words, that is, words that differ in only one letter. The players' task is to turn one word into another with the least number of intermediate links. For example, let’s make a “goat” from a “fox”: FOX - LINDEN - PAW - KAPA - KARA - BARK - GOAT. It is interesting to give tasks with a plot: so that “day” turns into “night”, “river” becomes “sea”. The well-known chain, where the “elephant” grows from the “fly”, is obtained in 16 moves: FLY - MURA - TURA - TARA - KARA - KARE - CAFE - KAFR - MUSTER - SKAY - HOOK - ARINK - LESSON - DEADLINE - STOCK - MOAN - ELEPHANT (example by Evgeny Gik). To practice, you can compete in finding metagrams for a word. For example, the word “tone” gives “sleep”, “background”, “current”, “tom”, “tan” and so on - whoever gets the most options wins.
ABC Trim, alphabet enchanté. Illustrations by Bertal. France, 1861 Wikimedia Commons
Hat
A game for a company of four people, requiring simple equipment: pens, paper and a “hat” (an ordinary plastic bag will do). Sheets of paper need to be torn into small pieces and distributed to the players, the number of pieces depends on how many people are playing: the larger the company, the less for each person. Players write words on pieces of paper (one for each piece of paper) and throw them into the “hat”. Here, too, there are options - you can simply play with words (noun, common noun, singular), or you can play with famous people or literary characters. Then the participants are divided into teams - two or more people in each; Everyone’s task is to explain to their teammates in 20 seconds (or 30, or a minute - the timing can be set according to your own choice) the largest number of words randomly pulled out of the “hat”, without using the same roots. If the driver could not explain a word, it returns to the hat and will be played by the other team. At the end of the game, the words guessed by different representatives of the same team are summed up, their number is counted, and the team with the most pieces of paper is awarded the victory. A popular version of the game: everything is the same, but in the first round the players explain the words (or describe the characters) orally, in the second they show them in pantomime, in the third they explain the same words in one word. And recently a board game appeared, where you not only need to explain and show, but also draw.
