"The Hungry Caterpillar" or "Beware of The Birds "
A game for young students of German.
It's cheap, simple, effective and fun.
The upper two classes in Kinnoull have been learning German. Their teachers Mrs Wilma Ross and Mrs Connie Sinclair had to develop games to use with their classes as part of the German teaching courses that they undertook. Wilma produced this game and is pleased to share it with any teachers who would like to make use of it. Connie's game will appear here just as soon as it can be recovered from the person who borrowed and then lost it !
The primary purpose of the game is to teach and reinforce some basic German vocabulary. The version shown here reinforces selected numbers, foods, colours and directions ( up/down left/right north/south east/west ). The game can be very easily modified to cover any numbers or foods, or the theme could be changed to cover clothing and weather.It would also be very easy to use the game to teach similar vocabulary in any language.
The game scenario involves a hungry caterpillar controlled by throws of a die, moving around a gridded gameboard to visit hidden surprises . Some of the surprises contain food which the caterpillar eats, others contain birds which "eat" the caterpillar. An alternative scenario "Beware the Weather ", could be to have a "boy" or "girl" visiting the surprise boxes which contain items of clothing which have to be collected in order to be the first player fully dressed, with some boxes containing rain, storms, or wind which result in all clothing being lost or sunshine which results in one item of clothing being sacrificed.
A suggestion for a "Hi-tech" ICT version of the game appears at the foot of this page.
| The gameboard consists of an 8 by 10 grid with coloured numbered surprise boxes randomly placed. The numbers on the boxes depend on the numbers selected by the teacher for reinforcement. The contents of the surprise boxes are held with blutack adhesive so that they can be moved from time to time to prevent players remembering and cheating. |  |
| In our case the food and bird pictures were copied from some German teaching resource material that Wilma obtained as part of her MLPS course but they could also be cut from magazines.Plastic lamination helps keep the pictures in good condition. |  |
The rules of the game:
Players, either individuals or small groups start from a random part of the board chosen by dropping the die and seeing where it lands. They have to score a 6 on the die before their first move.Thereafter they move up/down left/right or north/south east/west the number of squares they have scored. In order to move they must say in German the number of squares they can move and the direction in which they have elected to move. If they FINISH the move on a surprise box they must say the number on the box and colour of the box before they can open it. If the box contains food they must say what the food is thereby winning the food, but if the surprise is a bird their caterpillar is "eaten" and goes to the side of the board and cannot start again until a 6 has been rolled.The starting point for a resurrected caterpillar is the same as the original starting point.
Once opened the boxes remain open for the duration of the game. The winner is the caterpillar that has managed to eat the most food.
The pictures depend on the vocabulary chosen for reinforcement .The game is introduced in German and the dialogue for this is shown in the table below.
Sorry about the missing accents etc but have not yet discovered a way to insert them so that they display in web browsers.
| Wir wollen jetzt spielen. | We are going to play a game now. |
| Das Spiel heist "Vorsicht vor den Vogeln" | The game is called "Beware of the Birds". |
| Ihr sollt jetzt Gruppen von drei person machen. | You should now make groups of three people. |
| Macht eure Gruppen - Fertig ! | Make your groups - Ready ! |
| Wir brauchen einen Wurful und einen Becher fur jede Gruppe. | You need a die and a beaker for each group. |
| Hier haben wir sechs klitze - kline Raupen | Here we have six tiny caterpillars. |
| Gruppe eins ist rot, zwei ist blau, drei ist grun ... | Group one is red, two is blue, three is green..... |
| Ihr braucht eiene sechs um zu beginnen. | You need a six to begin. |
| Ihr spielt so ------- | You play like this ------ |
| Vielleicht habe Ich eine vier gewurfelt. | Perhaps I have thrown a four. |
| Ich gehe zwei Feldern Nordwarts und zwei Feldern Ostwarts, oder vier Feldern Sudwarts und so weiter. | I go two squares Northwards and two squares Eastwards, or four squares Southwards and so on. |
| Die Raupe must auf den Zahlen landen. Jede gruppe must die Farbe und die Zahl nennen. | The caterpillar must land on the numbers. Each group must name the colour and the number. |
| Unter einer Zahl ist ein Bild Karte. | Under each number is a picture card. |
| Jede Gruppe must die Karte nennen - der Kase, der Fisch und so weiter. | Each group must name the card - cheese, fish and so on. |
| Wenn ihr die richtig Antwort gebt bekommt die Gruppe die Karte. | When you give the correct answer the group gains the card. |
| Aber wenn ein Vogel unter Zahl ist, frister die Raupe und das unglukliche Tier ist tot. | But when a bird is under the number it eats the caterpillar and the unlucky animal is dead. |
| Ihr musst wieder eine sechs wurfehn um eine neue Raupe zu bekommen. | You must throw another six to gain another caterpillar. |
| Verstanden ? Gut ! Also beginnen wir. | Do you understand ? Good ! Let's begin! |
An ICT implementation of this game has been considered but putting up an on-line version would involve players with significant on-line costs. However if you have a web authoring program such as "FrontPage98" that allows you to create a web and browse it off-line you could very easily create quite an impressive looking game to use on your classroom computer, that is easily modified at any time to suit the changing needs of your class, without spending evenings on the kitchen table or living room floor creating new cards or grids.You could also consider using one of the many database applications available in schools to implement the game. It could be done fairly easily using "Filemaker Pro" by anyone who has had a little experience with the program.
All you need to do is create a table of 8 columns and 10 rows ( or what ever suits you ). Put a number in each cell in the table and a simple small graphic in the "surprise" cells. Then create a new web page for each of the surprise cells with hyperlinks to these from the surprise cells in the main table and links back to these cells from the associated surprise page. You can then insert good quality photos, scans or graphics in the surprise pages and if you want to be more ambitious and make the game even more entertaining you could add some suitably scary audio and dynamic text effects.Once you have a suitable stock of graphics, changing the content of the game can be done in minutes.
Click on the caterpillar to see a very simple example of what you could do.
