The Gumball Game (Prepositions of Motion)

“I dropped my gumball, and it went . . . . .”

Required items:

1) Index cards, or pieces of paper

2) A large drawing surface (whiteboard, blackboard, a big piece of paper)

This is a fun activity to help students use the prepositions of motion they already know.

First, get a pile of index cards (preferably ones that you cannot see through). Divide the cards into two piles — one pile will be prepositions, the other will be nouns.

Write the preositions of motion [over, through, under, around, into, out of, . . . etc.] onto the cards in one of the two piles. On the other pile of cards, write nouns or get your class to suggest nouns [my nose, the library, a tiger, my brother, the teacher, Jupiter, . . . etc.]. * These nouns must be concrete nouns — nouns that one can see and touch, i.e. not “my personality” or “justice” etc.

For the game, get 1/2 of the class at a drawing board (white board, black board, big piece of paper), and the other students at the other side of the classroom. Give the students at the drawing board markers or chalk, and give the students on the other side of the classroom the cards. (You should mark on the back of the cards which cards are nouns or prepositions . . .  you can do this by color).

Have the students place the cards facedown on a table, and choose 1 preposition card, and 1 noun card. They will then tell the students at the drawing board what to draw:

For example: “into” “the garbage“

“The gumball went into the garbage.”

(The student who is drawing should draw a gumball going into the garbage . . .  the next students will continue the chain).

This game is really fun because the results are unpredictable with the random selection of nouns and prepositions. Students really enjoy it if you allow them to come up with the nouns.

As a wrap-up, you can get the whole class to repeat (or tell) where the gumball went.

This post was submitted by Mandy.