Peg Friends Stacking Farm

 

Peg Friends Stacking Farm

Peg Friends Stacking Farm is an updated version of an old-fashioned pegboard activity. I previously blogged about Peg People Around the Town, which includes a mat with a town scene and 9 3-piece peg community helper persons. Peg Friends Stacking Farm has a mat with a simple farm scene and 12 2-piece farm animals.

The mat base is made of firm foam with a farm picture (see image above). The mat is a 10" square. There are 12 holes in the mat, one for each animal.

The animals are each made of two plastic pegs - top and bottom. Each animal will be 3.25" when stacked. Each animal will have the same color pegs, top and bottom. There are three animals with blue pegs, three with purple pegs, three with green and three with orange. Each peg has a hole on top so that you can stack them as high as you want. The animals are stickers. I have used my other version quite a bit and no sticker shows any signs of coming off. Learning Resources is one of my favorite toy makers, in part because of the durability of their products.

The mats and pegs are the same size so you can use them together if you have both.

One of my pet peeves with games is when they put a hole in the box so the contents can show through. This requires you to keep the inside packaging intact so the pieces don't fall out or else bag them. This has a box like that.

For more information about peg-type games and toys check out What's in Your Therapy Box? Peg Board Edition.

Try this:

• Play with the pieces and show how they stack and then insert into the mat. 
• Sort the pegs into piles by color, them build the animals.
  
• Place all the animal bottoms on the board and let the player place the correct head on each one.
  
• Place the two pieces for an animal next to the individual and ask them to assemble in the correct order.
• Put two pieces together that don't match and then make up a name for your new animal. A pig and a donkey might be a pinkey or ponkey.
  
• Talk about each animal as you play. Break into a verse of Old McDonald's Farm.
• Sing the Old McDonald's Farm chorus making the sounds of the animals in the order they are stacked on the mat. With a moo moo here, and a meow meow there, and a quack quack here, and an oink oink there...
  
• Mix the pieces together. Call out an animal. Let the player find the two pieces, assemble them and place the on the farm mat. Or instead of calling out an animal, make an animal sound.
  
• Use two hands. Hold the bottom piece in one hand and place the other piece on top. Then put the animal into the mat.
• Stack all the pegs in one big tower. Reach up as high as you can. I steady it as they go.
• Work on visual discrimination, spatial relations, eye-hand coordination, coordinated use of two hands, body awareness, sequencing, manual dexterity, process skills, creativity, executive functioning skills, play and leisure exploration and participation 
  
  

In the box: 24 body pieces, 1 map mat

 

Quack-A-Doodle Moo

Quack-a-Doodle-Moo

Set you dignity aside and get ready to play Quack-a-Doodle-Moo. It's going to get noisy in here. 

When I saw the box I was sure there was going to be cute animal pieces inside, but nope, just cards. The game consists of 96 animal cards (8 each for 12 animals) and 12 barn cards (1 for each animal).  The animals are rooster, cow, duck, snake, sheep, dog, cat, mouse, pig, owl, frog and donkey. Each animal card shows one animal and the sound it makes. The back of each card is printed with the game name. Each barn card shows one animal and the sound it makes and the back shows the picture of a barn. Here are examples:

 

The card on the right is the barn card. The other three cards are animal playing cards.

Object:

Be the first player to play all your cards from your hand.

Set up:

The number of animal sets you will use will depend on how many people are playing. Retrieve the cards you will be using and deal them out evenly, animal side down, between players. If there are extra cards, lay them aside. Mix the barn cards animal side down and each player will randomly pick one. Taking turns, each player will make the sound of the animal on their barn card. Remember who has what, this will be important later in the game. Then all players flip their barn card so the animal is no longer seen. 

Play:

Each player picks up his deck of animal cards with the animal picture down, and holds them in one hand. Players take turns. Flip the top card from your stack, flipping it outward so all can see the animal at the same time, and place it on a stack in front of you. Going clockwise, each player will flip one card from their stack until a card is flipped that matches an animal card already showing on the table. Both of those player will race to make the sound of the other player's animal that is hidden in his barn. The player who is first to correctly make the sound is the winner of the match. The winner gives all the cards in the stack in front of the to the loser of the match. The loser must take those cards, plus the stack of cards he has already played in front of himself, and add them to the bottom of the stack in his hand. Play resumes. The first player to play all the cards in his hand wins the game. 

Try this:

• Skip the game, just flip the cards and practice recognizing animals and making their sounds.
• Play a game of memory match by shuffling the cards and placing them in a grid, face-down, on the table top. Use fewer cards if 96 is too many. Let players pick up as many cards to make a set as they can. If you can remember two, pick up two. If you remember three, pick up three. However, if you make a mistake flipping a card, you will lose the whole set. Go for sets of two, three or even four!
• Sort the playing cards onto the barns. Start with fewer barns than 12 and increase as the player is capable of sorting more. Place the playing cards in a stack in front of the player and ask them to separate and pick up each card from the stack without sliding any other cards off the stack.
  
• Hold the cards in the non-dominant hand and separate them by pushing the top card off with the thumb. Take it with the dominant hand and play it.
  

In the box: 96 animal cards, 12 barn cards

If you are interested in purchasing this game or just want more information, click on the image below: