Over Christmas I found a fun new game that would be excellent for the mentoring hour! It’s called Jungle Speed and it’s similar to the game of “Spoons” if you are familiar with that one. Basically, you and your child are laying down cards from your deck one at a time. As soon as you spot a match, you need to be the first to grab the yellow totem that is in the middle of the table. What makes this tricky is that some of the pictures look very similar, so you need to pay close attention. This will help your child develop those important visual discrimination skills which are necessary for reading.
Let me make a suggestion to keep this game fun and simple…take out all of the “special” cards, which can make the game confusing at the start. Once you have mastered the basic game, you can add those back to the deck. Also, since the object of the game is to be the first to get rid of all of your cards, you may consider dealing fewer cards to a younger child so the game is a little more fair. I’ll admit…even though I did that when I played this with my seven year old son, I still won, BUT, we were having so much fun playing together that it didn’t even upset him! Now, that’s a good game!