Fun with Hopscotch

Time travel back to our childhood, most of us would have memories of playing hopscotch at the playground, school, void deck, and so on. The hopscotch is typically made up of 9 boxes and a semicircle. A bean bag would be thrown into one of the boxes at random and the player would hop over to the bean bag. At a glance, the hopscotch game supports two developmental domains - gross motor skill and cognitive skill (recognising the numbers that are typically written in the boxes).

What are some ways to incorporate other developmental domains into this simple, yet engaging, activity for the children? At iloforest, we take on the concept of learning through play - where children are intrinsically motivated to learn. You are strongly encouraged to engage in this activity with your child!

Rather than just having numbers in the boxes, you could replace those numbers with task cards.

The iloforest hopscotch!

1. Place task cards randomly in each boxes.
2. Throw the bean bag into a box at random!
3. Complete the task on the task card that the bean bag lands on.
4. Continue with the traditional hopscotch game (hopping and picking up bean bag on the way back)
5. Next person's turn! Repeat from step 2 onwards.

The integration of game and learning concepts come into play through the tasks you present on the task cards. Some examples could be:

• Spin 2 times
• Sing a song
• 3 words that starts with 'S' in 10 counts*
• What is 2 less than 5?

* Notice that the word 'count' is used instead of 'seconds'? This is because young children may find it challenging to grasp the concept of time, but they would be able to count to 10 in steady beats.

Learning concepts can be reinforced through these tasks and implemented through this simple game of hopscotch. This provides opportunities for learning to be engaging and fun! Children can learn a whole lot about themselves through play and most importantly, the biggest takeaway would be creating happy memories.

Hop away! ☺