Every now and then I fill in at primary school as a classroom aide. I don’t do any teaching, or much of anything on my own, but every now and then, I have to manage the kids because the teacher has been called away for five minutes. Discipline is a bit of an issue in this school at times (all these kids have disabilities) and the kids are pretty quick to start getting out of their seats, or teasing someone, or just being loud. I need something to do with them while we wait for the teacher, that can be started and stopped at a moment’s notice. The 5-7 yr olds are the most difficult; the older ones seem to be able to amuse themselves quietly.
Heads down thumbs up. Choose about three students to be ‘it’, and get them to come to the front. Everyone else put their heads down on their desks, make their hands into a thumbs up sign and put them on the desk too. The three ‘its’ walk around quietly, and each chooses another student by touching their thumb. When they’re done, you say “Heads up, stand up if you were touched.” The kids who were chosen have to guess who touched them. If they get it right, they get to be it next round.
I must say I played Heads Down Thumbs Up all the time when I was in primary school and it was really, really fun. I miss it.
If only there were more situations in adult life that would lend themselves to a good ol’ round of Heads Down Thumbs Up, or “HDTU”, as it was called by… well, let’s be honest, nobody.
Actually, I had a teacher that called it “7 Up”, and of couse, that’s the number of kids that were “it”.
Mind you, this was back when teachers didn’t whine about having class sizes of 35 or so.
Up until the 6th grade we played a game where everyone sat on the desk and you threw one of those red bouncy balls to each person. If you dropped it, threw badly or made any noise you were out and had to sit down.
Telephone is also a fun game. Tell the first kid a sentence and he repeats it into the ear of the next and so on until the last one says what the sentence was when it gets to her. The kids of course need to be quiet so the whisperer can be heard by the current sentence speaker.
Heads Down, Seven Up! I miss that game!
I came here to suggest that or Telephone. Both were fun games, quiet games and we all wanted to play them.
We used to play “heads down seven up” too.
We would also play “hang-man” on the chalkboard. With the one guessing the word correctly got to pick the next word.