Barnyard Dance Animal Action Dice Game

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This is a fun activity that we did to go along with our farm theme during Gv's Latticed Learning time.

Ever since a good friend presented baby Gv with the book Barnyard Dance by Sandra Boynton, we have had hours of fun romping and stomping around to the square-dancey verses.

So, I figured the perfect activity to go along with it all would be to create an animal action dice game to match the book.

I happened to have really cool pocket cubes like these from my classroom, so I chose six animal actions from the book, drew up the cards to match, and stuffed them in the dice pockets.

Then we rolled and got moving:

Bow to the cow

What cracked me up the most is that I'd been the "roller" the first time Gv and I played this game.  When it got to the point where we had just one animal left that we hadn't landed on, I dropped the die in such a way to guarantee that it would land sheep-up.  I wanted to make sure we'd had the chance to try out each animal action so Gv would know what to do for each one.

Well, later that afternoon, Gv began playing with this by herself.  She'd roll, call out the animal, do the action, then giggle as she grabbed the die to have another go.

It wasn't long before I noticed that she was beginning to throw the cube in a rather odd manner - she was doing the same thing I had done earlier - trying to get it to land on a specific animal so she could do that action.

I'm sure this "trick" that I unwittingly taught her will come around to bite me in the heiny someday.

Probably while playing Yahtzee .

I'm sharing this resource with you today - just print out the free printable, cut out the animal squares, and stick them in your own handy-dandy set of pocket dice.  Don't have a set of super-cool dice, you say?  No problem.  Just adhere these little critters onto each side of a square tissue box (like this) or make your own cube out of cardstock.

Click here to download your FREE printable.

Besides my not-so-sneaky little dice-throwing trick, what types of things have you unintentionally taught your children?  I'd love to hear!  Either leave a comment below or email me at lisahealy (at) outlook (dot) com.

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