It’s Toy Talk Thursday! The toy we are hacking this week is Catch the Fox! The game in which you have to save the flock and stop the fox. As an Occupational Therapist, I am always exploring different ways to build skills during play. Catch the Fox is a great game to play to build fine motor skills, sequencing, turn taking, simple counting skills and reaction times all on its own. However, if you also want to work on printing and writing skills – do I have the hack for you! To set up, all you have to do is access small circular stickers (I hole punched labels), print letters on the stickers, and place them under the chickens (as shown above).
Now, when the fox drops his drawers and all the chickens escape, your child is charged with catching the chickens and identifying the letters. This can be your goal if you are simply working on letter identification. If you want to increase the challenge, have the child then print the letters that they caught. And….if you have an older student and you want to challenge them even more…play until you have your hen house complete (5 chickens) and have them write a sentence with the chickens/letters caught (A sample from the 4 chickens above might be “Chickens eat sweet tomatoes.” This is an awesome game that can have your children (and OT) identifying letters, printing and writing for hours. It truly is fun for all. If you have other ways that you hack Catch the Fox, I would love to hear about it and share your hacks with others. If you would like to purchase Catch the Fox, it is available at http://amzn.to/2tuJX5r