Play Fair

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Woof! Woof!: The focus of this lesson is to provide children with opportunities to demonstrate their understanding of playing fair though reading and participation in organized games.

Teaching with Clifford’s Big Idea: Play Fair
When children are involved in an environment where fair play is emphasized, they experience how important it is to treat others fairly. Teamwork, taking turns, and sharing all reinforce social skills that help children interact successfully at home, school, and playtime.

Teach: Playing Fair is Fun!
Objective: The following activity nurtures essential:

• social and emotional skills
• language and literacy
• critical thinking and problem solving skills

Discuss how much fun playtime with friends can be when everyone participates and follows the rules! Share illustrations from Clifford's Sports Day by Norman Bridwell (Scholastic). What happens when Clifford participates? Have children retell the story describing Clifford's actions. Ask children to name their favorite games and explain game rules. Inquire how they value playing fair and ways that they can handle unfair situations on the playground. Also discuss how important it is to include everyone, especially new friends, when we are learning and playing at school!

Practice: Games Galore!
Objective: The following activity nurtures essential:

• physical and motor skills
• social and emotional skills

Remind children that playing fair means taking turns, sharing equipment, and being considerate of others during games. Use these fun game ideas to reinforce the concept of playing fair:

• Who's Missing Now?- Have children sit in a circle with closed eyes...no peeking because that's not fair! Sneak one child out of sight. Then let the children guess who's missing!
• Ball Play- Play catch with different kinds of balls, encouraging children to take turns throwing, catching, and retrieving the balls.
• Air Bounce- Encourage children to keep a large beach ball from touching the ground for as long as possible by passing/bouncing the ball from person to person.
• Wind Dancers-Divide children into three, four, or five groups. Give each group a different color of crepe paper steamers. Children will move on command as directions are given for each group to take turns running, circling, skipping, walking, zig-zagging, etc.

Extend: Cooperative learning is fun when everyone gets involved!

• Involve children in creating a new variation of a game that they love. Vote on a new game name and cooperatively make new rules. Play the game after everyone demonstrates understanding of the new game's rules of fair play.

Clifford’s Library: These books support Clifford’s Big Ideas and reinforce valuable early literacy skills:

• Clifford's Kitten (Clifford the Big Red Dog) by Norman Bridwell (Scholastic)
  
• Show-and-Tell Surprise: Clifford the Big Red Dog (Clifford the Big Red Dog Series) by Norman Bridwell (Scholastic)
  
• Playing Fair (Values Matter) by Shelly Neilsen (Abdo & Daughters)

Reproducibles:

• "F" is for Fair Printable Activity

Have Respect: Lesson plan based on Clifford The Big Red Dog, by Norman Bridwell
Woof! Woof!: This lesson's focus is on teaching children the value of respect through reading, language, and activities that share the uniqueness of diversity.

Be Responsible: Lesson plan based on Clifford The Big Red Dog, by Norman Bridwell
Woof! Woof!: The focus of this lesson is to help children become aware of how important it is to be responsible at home and school through meaningful reading and language experiences.

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