Hope it's not too late to add another Christmas game! Feel free to change it to whatever 5 cards you like though :)
Not sure how to link inspired but I was inspired by chacha's Santa, Cookie, Elf, Candy, Snowman Game and morebeans's Christmas Bouzu Mekuri Card Game
Materials:
-Cut and laminate the Christmas cards
-Make sure to print the background on the back so that the cards are not see through
- There are 40 cards: 7 of each (santa, cookie, elf, candy, present) card and 5 special Grinch cards.
- I made 8 decks and I have about 40 students in each class
Players
- Make groups of 4-5 players, ideally 5. 6 won't yield an even number of cards.
-I played with all levels of Junior High students (1,2,3). Could be played with all English Levels I think!
- I played this game with my friends and it was so fun!
Objective
- Get rid of all your cards and wait until the next match or Grinch to win. As long as you're not the last person to slap you win!
How to play (There's a Powerpoint with a demo and instructions in the notes) or I recommend doing a demo with your JTE
Intro
- Introduce the 5 cards santa, cookie, elf, candy, present. Tell them they must remember this pattern in this order. I keep this slide up during the game for them to reference but get them to start memorizing it.
-Shuffle and deal all the cards to the players face down. (Tell them NOT to look at their cards)
-Do janken to see who goes first
How to play:
-Player 1 says "Santa" and draws a card from their deck to put it in the middle
-Then Player 2 says "Cookie" and draws a card from their deck to put it in the middle
- Repeat this pattern for all players
- After "present" return back to Santa
When there's a match!
- For example Player 3 says "Elf" and draws a Elf card. It's a match! Everyone must slap the card in the middle!
- The slowest person to slap, has to take all the cards in the middle and puts it at the bottom of their own deck (you don't want to collect cards)
- The person that has to pick up cards starts from the beginning again with "Santa"
~Special Grinch Card ~
- First explain who the Grinch is, most of my students didn't know who he is
- If at any point in the game the Grinch appears everyone has to do a triangle above their head like a Santa hat, then slap the Grinch card
- The last person to do a Christmas tree and slap (or forgets to do it), has to pick up all the cards in the middle
How to win!
There are 2 conditions to win
1. A player must get rid of all their cards
2. The player with no cards must wait until there's another match or grinch and can't be the last person to slap the card. If they are not last they win!
~Precautions/tips~
- Tell kids to be careful when slapping, they may hurt each other
-For a group of 5 tell the 5th student to bring a chair over to their group so they can reach the center easier
- When there are only 2 students left, make them do a sudden death round and whoever loses that is the loser. Because it takes too long to wait for 2 players to finish while everyone is waiting.
Variations
- You can add more rules if they are comfortable with the game
- Like if they slap the wrong card or say the wrong word they have to pick up the cards in the middle. I didn't add this rule but I saw some groups add it on their own
-You could add extra special cards other than the Grinch
I think this game is really simple and fun so hope your classes will like it too!
So, how would you exactly incorporate this into a class? It doesn't seem relative to any grammar points and seems more like a free time game.
Yeah it's not really a grammar focused game. It was designed for before winter break after their exams to relax and have fun with a quick game. It's better used as a warm up game or free time game.
Played this at my English club and had a great time! Basically everyone is a senior citizen so the mechanism of last person takes the cards works out by not giving the younger people too much of an advantage. Explaining took a few tries but once they got going it was laughs and fun all around.