New Game: Clever Buyer!

This is a great game from Reeva to go with the ever popular How much? lesson:

1. Cut out some picture cards of things the kids already know (Eg. simple ones like cat, dog etc).
2. Write down a price on the back of each picture card. The kids musn’t see the prices but must know how to say them all in English (Eg. if numbers 1 to 12 are known to kids, then the prices should range from 1-12 dollars).
3. Give everyone some paper money (of course fake ones, ranging from 1-12 dollars) and tell them to buy items that they think are cheap.
4. Shopping must be done one by one, that means, all the buyers should get an equal chance to shop.
5. They go “How much is that cat?” and the teacher flips the cat card and shows them the price, and shouts out the price. The buyers have to give the fake paper money of that amount to the teacher to buy that cat.
6. And, the rule is they have to buy them! After the shopper asks how much is that cat or anything else, there is no one more time, the shoppers have to buy the things at the price mentioned!
( Also, the teacher can make sure that the students says “Thank you” after getting the card.)
A little twist to the game can be. If colors are already known to the students then have brown, white or black cats in your shop with varying prices. Then students go “How much is that brown cat or any other color”.  The fun part of the game is when one color cat is $1, students think that the other cats are possibly $1 , whereas it’s higher than that. So this lets students keep thinking and of course sometimes you can raise their heartbeat by not showing the price for some time and say “How much could it be?” and so forth. It adds to the fun.
Finally, after all the teacher’s items are sold, the students count their remaining cash amount.  And, the one who saved the most money is the “Clever Buyer” and wins the game.
Good part about the game  is that this game also introduces addition to the students (if students know addition), as at the end you need to count your saved money. But, if they don’t know addition, the teachers can write down how much they saved.
Thank you.
-Reeva.
Thanks Reeva,  what do you guys think of the game?

Richard Graham

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7 Responses to “New Game: Clever Buyer!”

  1. Sakura

    Thanks Reeva,

    I always do this once or twice a year to my classes but they are grouped into two teams – the buyer and the seller.

    Students love this game very much. I will do your version with my grade two students next month. I think it is more fun because they don’t know the prices.

  2. Reeva

    Hope it works well with you Sakura…. Good luck… 🙂

  3. jham

    The game is funny but i am thinking its not applicable to to large group of students, it will consume time . More better if you divide the students into seller and buyer , ..

  4. Margit

    This looks like a really good game.
    Can’t believe I’ve missed it.

    Was this THIS year?
    Well, I might do a little performance with this.
    Thanks Reeva

  6. Margit

    I went through the “games list” and clicked all those games I couldn’t relate to on first sight.

    The purpose (just in case you have another idea I’ve missed so far):
    I am going to do a play(story) in Summer, in which the characters are going to play different games. They are going to invite each other to play, discuss what and who will be IT, etc and explain the game to each other.

    So far I have Duck, Duck Goose (doing it with pronouns, though)
    Harry Potter, of course,
    What time is it Mr Wolf,
    and I’m thinking of this one.

    Any other ideas? (needs to be fun to watch for the moms)

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