*this post has been updated in May of 2016!* With my first year of tutoring with Classical Conversations behind me, one of my goals for this upcoming year was to create a rotation of review games to use during our 30 minute new grammar review time each week. Last year I found myself scrambling at the last minute during my prep to figure out what I would use to help review 7 weeks' worth of memory work! Last night I sat down with games I used last year and some new ones and got it all in order. I've included links where necessary. These games are designed to review the current week’s material plus the six previous weeks’ material, as directed by CC. These are simple games because it’s quite hard to be creative and elaborate with so much info to review in just 30 minutes. Additionally, it's important that we tutors present what can be easily replicated at home. I want moms to feel like they can do these with their kids too! Finally, I’m not a huge fan of creating a lot of competition between the students so most of these games avoid doing that. During the first few weeks of the CC year there isn't as much material to review. I've chosen games that can be replayed several times to fill up that half hour. Week 1: "What-to-do-how-to-say-it" by Half A Hundred Acre Wood. Go here for instructions or find the download on C3, username brandyferrell. Laminating, popsicle sticks, and cans or containers required. Week 2: "Fillerup" also by Half A Hundred Acre Wood. Go here for instructions or find the download on C3, username brandyferrell. Laminating required if you want to reuse. Week 3: CC Musical Chairs. This is based on an idea I heard at Practicum this year! Put chairs in a circle. There should be a chair for each student. On each chair, place a note card with a CC subject heading. If you have less than 7 students, put more than one card on a chair. If you have more than 7 students, use a “your choice” or “quiz your tutor” or “lucky break” card – really whatever you want! State which week’s material you will review. Play music (Timeline Song or Presidents Song!) and kids march around the chairs. When the music shuts off, they all sit on a chair and recite the memory work for the subject heading(s) they sat on. No chairs are taken away. Repeat as many more times as necessary with the rest of the memory work to be reviewed that day. Rotate any of the following games for the rest of the year! A) Memory Mogul by Sologratiamom. Go here for instructions! I used this a lot last year and did not create the board; I printed play money on cardstock and have it pre-sorted in envelopes to hand out to students so we can get started right away. To get in all the memory work you really have to keep it moving. Sometimes you have to restart the game if the bank goes broke (which it always does, ha!). You will need to do some printing and optional laminating. B and C) Beat the Clock. This game takes two weeks to complete. Have a room mom use a clock/stopwatch to see how long it takes students [as a unified group, which is a learning opportunity in itself!] to get through 7 weeks of each subject. Mom will then write that time down on a grid like the one pictured here. Go through all your subjects in this manner. THEN, the following week, drill them again! If they beat their previous time in the majority of the subjects, they get a reward; usually I bring in a special homemade treat. For timekeeping, I have just used a plain piece of paper with a quickly drawn grid, but I did find this file on C3. Unfortunately, I cannot give you a user name because I downloaded it to my computer awhile back and can’t find it on C3 now. It can be easily replicated though! D) CC Musical Chairs (recycled from week 3). Put chairs in a circle. There should be a chair for each student. On each chair, place a note card with a CC subject heading. If you have less than 7 students, put more than one card on a chair as needed. If you have more than 7 students, use a “your choice” or “quiz your tutor” or “lucky break” card – really whatever you want! State which week’s material you will review. Play music (Timeline Song or Presidents Song!) and kids march around the chairs. When the music shuts off, they all sit on a chair and recite the memory work for the subject heading(s) they sat on. No chairs are taken away. Repeat as many more times as necessary with the rest of the memory work to be reviewed that day. E) Basket Case. I like using items around my house for games. Our family “won” this silly game with tickets at Dave & Busters, and I thought it could easily be incorporated into a CC review game with some rules. You can find it on Amazon if you really want to purchase it though. Students can work in pairs (or individually if you happen to have a small class). Each individual/pair gets one week’s worth of memory work to recite. If they get all the subjects right, they can throw all the ping pong balls at the basket (they love when the tutor wears it!). For every subject they miss, they lose 4 balls. However many balls they get in the basket is the amount of points they receive (room mom keeps score on the board). Person/pair with the most points wins. F) Luck of the Draw. Buy a tri-fold display board (find them at the Dollar Tree) and glue three sides of index cards to make pockets. In the end it will look a lot like a Jeopardy-style board. Slip CC review flashcards in the pockets and kids can take turns coming up to choose a card (or a few) at a time. Sometimes I kept score, sometimes I didn't. Sometimes it doesn't have to be about competition and winning/losing! G) Buzzers: if you can get your hands on this set of 4 buzzers from Learning Resources (find them on Amazon), you can invent some quick rules for a quick game. H) Ball Pass: Sing/speak through 7 weeks of grammar while passing ball in a circle. Whoever is left with it at the end of each fact (or week, however you want to do it) gets a point. Pro tip: don't tell the kids ahead of time if highest points win or lose, because might get sneaky and base their play how many points they had up on the board. :-) I) Give and Take: Pair students off. Each team gets three of any object to use as "currency," i.e. poker chips, pennies, math counting bears, whatever! Ask each team a review question. When they answer correctly, they may take an object away from another team. If they answer incorrectly, no currency is exchanged. If a team runs out of "currency," they are out. See who has the most currency at the end of all the questions. Hope this helps my fellow tutors get a jump on things! I know I feel like a huge weight has been lifted knowing all this is already planned out for me. Happy prepping, tutors!