This game is the first proper five minute game I ever played with Ewan, way back in 2018 before Five Minute Mum even existed, and I was just plain old mummy! We had been to a National Trust place the day before and Ewan had chosen a wee toy from the gift shop which was a handheld rocket launcher. So the next day when we were just staying at home and it wasn’t raining in Manchester for once, I decided to see what I could do with that toy to make it maybe a bit more fun, and even perhaps (shhh whisper it) educational?!
I had an old roll of wallpaper in the shed from a craft project I had done (pre-kids of COURSE!) but it is always worth checking in DIY stores you go into for a single roll going cheap wallpaper bin as they are very handy to grab.
Anyway I cut the wallpaper into four bits and I wrote the letters of EWAN on them, then I pegged them to our washing line.
I can’t find a link to the exact rocket launcher Ewan is using here but there are similar versions on my Amazon Affiliate Shop linked HERE
Now of course I followed THE GOLDEN RULE and once he spotted it, he came running into the garden desperate to shoot the targets. Because this was one of the first times I had even attempted to introduce him to the letters in his name I simply said he had to hit the targets on the washing line from different points in the garden. As he hit them I shouted things like “You got the E, your name starts with that letter - you got it! Try and get the next letter in your name…A…there it is” etc etc. I was the one saying the letters. He took no noticed really, he was just enjoying playing with his new toy. But it doesn’t matter, because every little exposure counts as I explain here in my article on The Building Blocks of Learning.
If you want to know more about how I got my kids started on introducing the alphabet there is more HERE
Now once we had played this version of the game a few times I started to mix it up and by the time Florence was old enough to start being introduced to her name we had lots of ways to play. I also adapted it in multiple ways to learn numbers and tricky or spellings words. Here is a video I made in lockdown 2020 to show how we were playing The Target Practise whilst home educating…
As I mentioned in that video, this game is from my first book, Give Me Five, the link to buy it is HERE. Happy Playing!
