Use small pieces of colored cloth, paper or cardboard. Put into a box or cloth bag to mix up. choose one, hiding it in the palm of your hand. Project the color chosen out to the children. Have them "sense" or feel the color.
Another game is the thimble game, this is an old Victorian game. Traditionally the idea of the game is for one person to hide the thimble somewhere in a room. The children are then allowed into the room, the
object is for them to hunt for the thimble. Once each child has found it, they leave it and sit down in the middle of the room. After all the children have found it, the first one to find it gets to hide it the next
round. Our variation here is to have someone hide the thimble, bring the group of children into the room and have them sit in a circle in the middle of the room. The children then are to try and feel where the
thimble is hidden. Once they believe they know where it is hidden then allow them to go see if it is there. If they have found it then allow them to hide it and start the next round.
The Tarot is a great learning tool for small children. Since Tarot cards are so colorful, have them look at the cards and tell you the different colors. Also tarot cards have numbers and sets of numbers use them like flash cards. Soon you'll see they begin to get the feeling for the meanings of the cards. You can also teach them the general meanings of the cards, or simply let them construct a story around a card. Record their story either by taping it or even writing it down for them. You'll find children pick up on the
meaning quickly and easily. By taping the story your child can build on the story each day and is great activity to bring out the creativity in your children but it'll help them develop their sense's in reading the
cards. A fun thing to do is let them Design their own tarot deck. You can let them make small drawings, stick figures or whatever for the deck. Also let them take old magazine pictures, catalogs, stickers to cut out and put on cards to make the deck. You can use index cards, posterboard or cardstock to make the decks. I have been told that the US Game systems that makes most of the tarot decks also has a blank set for those that want to make their own. You can visit them at http://www.usgamesinc.com to find out a little more about this. If using cardstock you could either take them down to one of the office
max, depot, staples or kinkos places have them laminate the sheets if you don't already have a laminator. Or you could use contact paper. Laminate or cover with contact paper before cutting them out. This will just let them last longer. You could also just use one of the spray finishes to cover them with to help preserve them and let them last longer.
Also take those tarot cards and make a board game with it. Go online and save some of the thumbnail pics into a file for the deck or board squares. Make a sheet of all the different thumbnails pics in one of your programs, I use the word processing one. Then print out several sheets, best if you have a color printer! From here you can use a sticker paste to paste them on your game board. One of the easiest game boards we've used it to take colored file folders and make a path with the small stickers along the folder. Stickers are the easiest way to make a path on the file folders. You can use stickers you've designed yourself or copied, cut out of magazines, whatever or even simply use plain colored stickers.
For our game board we made a spiral path on the folder, avoid putting stickers in the fold of the folder, you want to be able to fold it up without messing up the game board. Once you've got your path designed, cover it with contact paper, again avoiding the fold, so there won't be any puckers in your board game. From here you can use old game pieces or purchase some items. What I did was a game piece that could be used on any game for my children. I simply took a stone that they had a preference for and then we carved their initial in it. If they had a magickal symbol that they preferred we used that. You could also just paint this on. My children enjoyed taking different magickal alphabets and making their own personal sigils with them and using that as their game piece identifier. From here there are many ways to play a game with the tarot cards. The main rule of our game was to get from the outside to the very last space in the spiral. This was accomplished by each of rolling the dice, the one with the lowest number went first. They rolled the dice again, they turned over a card on the tarot deck, gave the general meaning of the card and then they could move the spaces they rolled if they got it correct. I also put a few stickers here and there that made them leave the path. I made a couple of larger stickers along the sides of the path such as forest glade, waterfall, weedy garden. The stickers that they landed on might have something on them that said, you must go back 3 spaces for flying too fast on the path, or go directly to the waterfall, you must roll a 6 to come back and start on the path again. You get the idea, have fun designing your game board. Use this game board for other games or devise different rules for different types of tarot related games. Once again be creative with this. You can find all kinds of dice, game pieces at some of the dollar trees, Everything's a buck, Dollar general. Now we always had a silly game prize for the winner of the games. This could be anything from a crochet toy, to winning extra time each night with Mommy.
Another game, is a Victorian game called The Hunter and the Snake. You can play this inside or outside. This game teaches and lets children practice using other senses besides their eyes.
Items needed for the game are:
Blindfold
Rattle or noise maker
a circle of children or mix of adults and children
Rules of the game:
No one steps outside the circle.The Snake is caught when the Hunter touches the Snake. The Hunter wears the blindfold. The people in the circle can make all kinds of noise but can't tell the Hunter where the Snake is at. The person picked to be the Snake is given the rattle. Both the hunter and the snake are put into the center of the circle. The snake shakes the rattle about every 2 seconds moving in the circle. The snake is to keep away from the hunter inside the circle. The game is over when the hunter catches the snake, that is the only time that the hunter is allowed to remove the blindfold.