ABC Football

I really had no idea how exciting a game of pretend football with construction paper flags could really be. But let me tell you, it’s the talk of the day after you play. I’m going to have to think of every kind of football game I can because they were eating it UP. I am loving Kim Bearden (co founder of RCA) for giving me this idea. She played a football game with her middle school kids and I had to figure out a way to make it work for my kinders.

You could do this in your classroom, but we have a lovely little courtyard right outside of my door and I try to utilize it as much as I can.

The first thing I did was go out and hang up the markers for the “yards”. I started at 10 and went to 100. When they hit “100” they got to slam a football down on the ground and do a touchdown dance.

I kid you not.

Once everything was set up on our “field”, they had to get their flags made out of construction paper. We are in to the no-tackling kind of foot-ball here. Even though they weren’t really playing football…it’s just…smoke and mirrors.

Then, everyone lines up on the “10 yard line”.

Here is my student teacher playing with them after I got the game started so I could snap a few photos. She even wore a black and white striped dress today to match my Dad’s ref shirt that I was wearing over my clothes.

Here is how we played:

-I split the kids in to teams, but you can make it individual.

-We asked them questions like:

What is the letter/sound?

What letter comes before?

What letter comes after?

Is this a consonant or a vowel?

Is this an upper or lowercase letter?

We asked the students based on their level. Students that we knew that struggled, we asked them about letters and sounds. The students that we tested who know their letters and sounds, we asked them the harder questions. I loved this activity because we were able to differentiate on the spot. We also got to be outside and it got the kids up and moving.

Of course, the touchdown dance was their favorite part.

This really is SUCH an easy game to create on your own. If you want to use the exact images that I used, click the picture below. Everything you need is just a click to the printer away 🙂