GAMES/05-01

SPINNING YARNS  

Materials Needed: Large ball of yarn
How to Play:
The players sit in a circle. The first player is given a large ball of yarn. He begins to tell a story
of his choosing. At any point, he may stop and throw the yarn ball to anyone in the circle while
holding onto the end of the yarn. The person who receives the ball of yarn then continues the
same story. He may stop at any point and throw the ball of yarn to someone else in the circle
who has not had a chance to add to the story. He must hold onto the yarn at the point where
it reached him. This continues until everyone has had a turn to add to the story. By the
time the story is complete, it will be easy to see how a story is woven.

WACKY SENTENCE  

A news story should answer the four W's -- Who?, What?, Where? And When?
This game should help the boys understand this concept.
Materials Needed:
paper and pencil for each boy
one die
a larger version of the chart below
How to Play:
The first player rolls the die to find out the Who of his sentence. Let's say he rolls a four. He
looks at the chart and sees that four in the Who column is “a cat." He writes "A Cat" on his paper
and passes the die to the next person. This person rolls the die to answer the What. Say he rolls a
three. Under the What column, three is "gave me a ride" so the first boy writes "gave me a ride"
on his paper. The die is then passed to the next boy. It continues this way until the sentence is
complete. The second boy in the circle (the one who originally rolled the die for the What), then
rolls to begin his sentence. Play continues until everyone has a completed sentence. This game
works best if done in groups of four and then the groups are combined and all sentences are read
aloud to each other.