Slightly more difficult finger plays and forms of games than those listed in previous age period can be used, and simple forms of those games listed in succeeding period.
| Motor Accuracy: | |
| Tenpins | |
| Circle and Active Games: | |
| Ring-around-a-Rosie | |
| Cat and Mouse | |
Sense Games. These involve the “guessing” interest but require thought.
Sight and Observation. Tell what object, color, form is taken away from a group, or added. Match a color or form of flower or other object, first with object in hand, later from memory. “I saw”—relating what was seen on a walk, in a room, or when passing a store.
Touch. Tell the name of an object or form by handling it while blindfold.
Hearing. Tell the direction of a sound, instrument sounded, person speaking, while blindfolded.
Language Games. Many can be invented similar to the following, in which increase in speaking vocabulary is gained. Nouns: I went to the Zoo (store, boat, etc.) and there I saw—(name objects). Verbs: A train (bird, dog, wind, etc.) can—(name activities). Adjectives: I like squirrels (flowers, dolls, apples, etc.) because they are—(name adjectives).
Alertness. Children at this age, and until six, are often dawdling, dreamy. Games can be invented to cultivate dispatch and alertness, as “running a race” with a person or the clock, in dressing and undressing.
Poise, Relaxation, Concentration. What Montessori calls the “Game of Silence” cultivates these qualities. As played in the Montessori schools, the children sit quietly, relaxed, in a room slightly darkened, while all sounds are hushed, and all listen. After two or three minutes some one in an adjoining room whispers or calls faintly the name of a child, and the child goes as softly as possible, returning as softly. Ten or fifteen minutes is the limit of the children’s ability to play the game. Forms of it may be played when going through the house, or whenever quiet is especially desired; or when the children are becoming irritable or too nervous.