Your students will love playing tic-tac-toe with a Valentine’s twist!
With Valentine’s day coming soon, we were inspired to create our own hugs and kisses tic-tac-toe game…
Yesterday, I shared how we patterned with hugs and kisses using this great set of X’s and O’s. Â As I explained in that post, many of our students were already familiar with the idea that X’s and O’s stood for hugs and kisses. A lot of our kids like to write them in their simple notes to each other. I am quite certain this was something taught at home and then shared with each other in our writing center. For those who didn’t know, it took them about a minute to catch on to the idea…
Once we finished creating our patterns, we gathered up all of our X’s and O’s and moved over to a table to work on playing a game of hugs and kisses tic-tac-toe…
Making Tic-Tac-Toe Boards
The first thing we had to do was create our tic-tac-toe boards.  Deborah demonstrated what a tic-tac-toe board looks like, using just four lines to create nine boxes.  The children were eager to play so they found their markers and rulers and quickly got started creating their game board. Once again, most of our students already knew how to make a tic-tac-toe board but Deborah shared anyway for the benefit of those who might need a little prompting…
The process of creating the game board wasn’t much of a challenge for our pre-k children since they are used to creating  graphs and charts.  They quickly drew up their lines and soon had a great looking set of tic tac toe boards.   One or two of our game boards had more then 9 squares, but that was okay.  Especially since we have a habit of making up our own rules for just about every game we play…
Exploring their Valentine’s Inspired Game
Once their game boards were complete, the children were ready to play. Â At first, they played by themselves, filling their game board with X’s and O’s…
Playing Tic-Tac-Toe with Friends
Once they had the hang of it, they were ready to challenge each other to a game…
Getting Creative with Tic-Tac-Toe
There were no real winners or losers in our game of tic-tac-toe. Â It was just a basic lesson in learning how to play a game together. Â You certainly don’t need X’s or O’s to play. Â You can use buttons, lids, cereal, pasta, or any fun shape. Â When the children were all done playing, they put their game boards in their baskets to take home, ready to challenge their families to a game of hugs and kisses tic-tac-toe…
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