Battleship Review Game {Great for CC Tutors}

Happy New Year to you! I hope that this post finds you excited to see growth and maturity in your life, as well as the lives of your children this year. Personally, there are specific things I hope to see change and grow as I apply myself to working diligently in my home and with my kids. With God's help, it is ALL possible!

Here is a little game that I came up with to help my class of 6-year-olds focus and still have fun during the 30 minute review time of our Classical Conversations community day. The game is an oldie but the application for CC is a new idea (I think... I haven't seen anything exactly like it on the web yet).

Creating a Battleship poster board is a fun way to review the past 7 weeks of grammar with your students (and/or your own children at home). It only takes 40 minutes to create this reusable game and the kids will LOVE it!

Materials needed to create the game: 

- one poster board
-  42 Post-it notes
- a permanent marker
- scissors
- three different colors of card stock (one sheet of each color)
- a straight edge (a yard stick or another large piece of paper)
- some tape

 A look at the final product!

 Putting together your poster board:

- Start by drawing a straight line down the left side of your poster board and another across the top. This creates your grid outline.

- Place seven post-it notes close together in a horizontal line to make the first row. Continue with placing six post-it notes in a vertical line to the left to make the first column. This will help you draw a correctly spaced grid.

- With those post-its in place, use your straight edge to draw the ocean grid.

- Once the grid is complete, fill in the rows with post-its.

- Down the left side write the numbers 1 though 6.

- Across the top write the letters "A" through "G".

- Draw and cut out your ships from the three pieces of cards stock. I made the following ships: 3 small orange boats (they will occupy 2 squares each), 2 medium blue ships (to occupy 3 squares each) and 2 large green submarines (to occupy 4 squares each).

- Next, cut each ship into the same number of pieces as the squares they will occupy.

Before and after I cut my ships

- Using small pieces of rolled up tape, place your all of your ships on the ocean grid, under the post-its.
 
*Before placing my ships, I glance at the correlating spaces' memory work that the kids would answer. I chose subjects from the past 6 weeks that they needed more work on than others, knowing that they would choose squares that the ships were under once one piece of a ship was discovered. Hope that makes sense :)*

Facing the boats either horizontally or vertically will help your students guess where the rest of the ship is hidden.

A sneak peek of the hidden ships  :)

- Now your Battleship game is ready to go!

 

What you need to play the game:

 

- The poster board game, complete with hidden ships, hung on a wall or from a table. (Placing the poster board a little lower than where the children are sitting will help them resist the urge to look up and under the hanging post-it notes to see where the hidden ships are.)

- Cheat Sheet to help you quickly locate correct review question to ask. ***You can create this by writing the numbers 1-6 down the left side of a piece of paper, and the letters A-G across the top of the paper - just like your Battleship grid. Then, next to the numbers, write a letter for each subject you will cover (e.g. "H" for history, "G" for geography and "E" for English). Above the letters at the top of the page, write the week numbers that you will cover during this game. For our class, we are in week 14 so I started with 14 and worked backwards 7 weeks. At the end of our game, we sang our Timeline song together, so it was covered too!***

- Foundations Guide

- A white board or piece of paper showing students the color and shape of the ships they are looking for and how many remain to sink. 

- Optional: small treats to hand out when a ship is "sunk"

How we played the game: 

- The goal of the game is for the students to "sink" all of the hidden ships, and win small rewards along the way. It's a class effort which builds a team mentality! A great game for any age group.

- Each child took a turn calling out a grid square (e.g., "C,3").

- I then looked at my cheat sheet to see the week and subject to turn to in my CC Foundations Guide and asked the student a review question. (On my cheat sheet, "C,3" would have been English from week 12 memory work.)

- Once the review question was answered by the student or by the class as a whole, I removed that grid's post-it note and the "shot" was either a "miss" (nothing under the post-it) or a "hit" (part of a ship was reveled).

- Students took turns calling out coordinates and answering review questions and when a ship was completely uncovered I passed out an M-n-M to each child as a small reward (and incentive to keep paying attention and playing).

- The sheer joy of sinking my hidden ships may have been enough excitement to keep their attention, but the small piece of chocolate was a fun addition.

- We played as long as our time allowed. I believe that each of my 6 students had 4 turns answering review questions (and they helped one another along the way, when needed). 

EDIT ADDED 3/19/2016:

***I have found when using this game, especially with the Abecedarian class, that we don't get through very much memory work. I have found it best to review 3 weeks of history and then have a child choose a square on the ocean grid to "shoot" his/her cannon ball on to uncover a ship. Then I will continue with the next 4 weeks of history, the Helping Verb song, a few Latin Declension songs, 3 or 4 weeks of science questions, geography, or some math songs. This way we cover more memory work in those last 30 minutes!***

What the end of our game time looked like

I noticed that while playing this game, the children were taking pride in answering the review questions on their own, whereas in the past it was difficult for me to get a clear answer from them one at a time. In past review sessions, they seemed to prefer answering as a group, maybe so that if they messed up it wouldn't be noticed. 

Also, we covered a large range of information from the past 6 weeks (7 weeks if you count this week's information learned that same morning). This helped me not stress out and have lots of fun with the kids. We ended on a great note!

The kids only uncovered about half of my ships in the 30 minute review time, so I plan to save the rest of the board to play with next week. After that, I can remove my ships and place them in different locations to change up the game!

This game is sure to make even your littlest students SMILE!

The only expense may be using more post-it notes to create another grid in a few weeks, unless my current post-it notes keep their "stick" and don't get too bent out of shape. We will see!

I hope that this simple game is a help to those of you who tutor CC classes and are stumped with a review game that works. Like I said, my class really enjoyed this game and they are looking forward to playing again next week!

"And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart." - Galatians 6:9 

Have a blessed day! Keep up the wonderful work with your class and with your children. Our work is not in vain! 

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