Puck!

The goal of Puck! is pretty straightforward: Throw a puck on a flat surface so that it will bounce back up and into a cup. The instructions offer the following three games:

• Fast Battle
• Each player creates a triangle of five pucks, ensuring that their foremost cup is touching the foremost cup of their opponent.
• Players each take 20 pucks.
• When ready, shout "PUCK!" to start the game.
• Both players simultaneously bounce pucks, attempting to get them into their opponent's cups.
• If a puck lands in one of your single cups, quickly put your stack of cups on top of it. If a puck lands in your stack, quickly put an empty cup on top of the stack.
• The first player to get a puck in the top of their opponent's stack of five cups wins!
• Free-For-All Puck Sanity
• For 2-3 players, each players starts with 2 cups. For 4-5 players each player starts with 1 cup. Each player sets their cup(s) to their side within easy reach.
• Place one cup in the middle of all the players.
•  Divide the pucks evenly amongst all players.
• When ready, everyone shouts "PUCK!" and races to bounce one of their pucks into the middle cup.
• If a player gets one of their pucks into the middle cup, they quickly stack one of their cups onto the middle cup.
• The first player to get all of their cups PLUS one final puck into the middle stack in the PUCK Grandmaster.
• The Grudge Match
• Set up a row of five cups in front of each player/team.
• Players/teams take 20 pucks each.
• Taking turns, player try to bounce one puck from behind their row to land in one of their opponent's cups. If a puck lands in one of your single cups, put your stack of cups on top of it. If a puck lands in your stack, put an empty cup on top.
• If you land a puck in your opponent's cup, you go again. If you don't or you bounce one into your own cup, the play passes to your opponent. 
• The first player to get a puck in the top of their opponent's stack of five wins. 

Back of the box to show size of cups and pucks.

Try this:

• Practice bouncing the pucks into the cups before playing an actual game to get the feel.
• Assess your success after each puck lands and adjust your attempt as necessary for the next try. (i.e. bounced too hard, too far to the left, etc.)
•  Place all the cups in the middle of the playing area. Bounce your pucks into any of the cups. Reduce the amount of cups as you get better to narrow your options and improve your aim.
• Work on eye-hand coordination, spatial relations, manual dexterity, executive functioning, social interaction skills, motor planning, grading pressure, process skills, play and leisure exploration and participation
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•  In the box: 11 cups, 40 pucks

Number Construction

Number Construction

In the box: 50 number pieces, 5 cards

 
Number Construction reminds me of the Handwriting Without Tears (HWT) program, but it is NOT a HWT product. I am a huge fan of HWT and used it exclusively when I was a school OT. It's a great program, especially for kids who have trouble with visual perceptual skills. One year I even did a whole-class session in a self-contained room four days a week, and by the end of the year everyone was writing legibly. The teacher later told me that there were several older kids in the class that she didn't think would ever learn to write. I have several HWT products but have not blogged about them yet, but will. So much for my plug for HWT. This activity is not a HWT product and does not exactlymatch the HWT numbers for shapes. 

This activity includes four different shaped hard, plastic pieces that will be used to build the numbers. Each of the four pieces are a different color (blue, purple, green,  orange). The yellow bolts are used for counting, not constructing, and are made from a rubbery plastic material. You could also place them on the numbers in the positions that you would use to teach Touch Math, another program that I have used many times successfully when teaching money skills. There are not enough pieces to make all the numbers at the same time. 

The five double-sided cards show numbers from 0 - 9. Each side shows one number. The top of the card shows the pieces you will need to construct the number and the bottom shows the finished number. The yellow bolts can then be used as manipulatives to count out the number. JMHO.

Back of the box.

 

Construction cards.

Try this:

• Work on visual discrimination, spatial relations, visual form constancy, visual closure, eye-hand coordination, manual dexterity, coordinated use of both hands, Touch Math, numbers 0-9, executive functioning skills, process skills, play and leisure exploration and participation