“Snowman” – the New “executioner”
At one time, when we found ourselves in a situation in which we had to spend some time – which was often due to the lack of cell phones – we practiced our spelling skills by hanging figurines from sticks.
On the one hand, we all played Executioner, we probably didn’t think too much about it, we were familiar with other games that were much more brutal, and most of us ended well.
On the other hand, it’s 2019 and our country has a dark and terrifying history of lynching, and perhaps we could choose a more positive, kid-friendly symbol to help kids practice vocabulary.
Like a snowman.
You play Snowman just like Hangman, only with different steps. The lesson plan breaks this down for us:
In the hangman game, when the child skips a letter of the secret word, you draw a circle (representing the head) in the loop. This is followed by a long stick (body), two sticks (arms), two sticks (legs), two eyes and a sad face. There are nine errors in total. When you play Snowman, the first wrong answer gets the bottom (and largest) snowball, the second one adds a middle snowball, and the third one adds a snowball at the top (snowman’s head). After that, the snowman receives two sticks (hands), a top hat (like the one worn by the Frosty snowman), two eyes and a sad face. Voila! Nine mistakes!
You can stick with just nine points, or you can have fun and get as many details as you want. I remember adding clothes and shoes to my executioners during especially epic rounds – wow, I cringe from myself – and you could do the same by adding a scarf, buttons, and a carrot nose to your snowmen.
Another (non-winter) option is ” Astronaut “, in which players draw a spaceship. You can also create your own character – for example, draw “Monster Man” if snowmen and spaceships are too cute for your kids.