What it is: Four corners
is a classroom game. It’s simple, there’s not really any skill involved, and it’s fun.
What you need: Just players
and a room with four corners!
How to play: First assign
each corner of your room a number one through four. Put up a four signs with the numbers 1-4 written on them in each corner.
Then select one player to be It, like Melanie. Melanie
stands in the middle of the room, closes her eyes, and counts to ten (or
another specified number). While she’s counting, all of the other players
silently move to a corner of the room. Each player can pick whichever corner
they want.
When Melanie is done counting, she keeps her eyes
closed and then tries to guess which corner has the most people, based on the
sounds she might have heard when she was counting. Say she heard a lot of
rustling and banging over by the door in corner number 4. She would say out
loud, “Four!” Then all of the players in corner 4 would be out and would go sit
down at their desks. Then Melanie begins another round, counting to ten again
while players move to whichever corner they want. Then Melanie
picks a corner, the players in that corner are out, and a new round
starts. Play continues until one player is left – the new It.
Strategies: You obviously
want to be quiet when picking a corner. You don’t want Melanie to know that
your corner is occupied! But, if you have time and if you move fast, maybe you
could throw her off – make a noise over by corner 3 before hurrying silently
back to corner 2. (The corner 3 people wouldn’t like it much, though.) When
I’ve played, we’ve mostly tried to move as silently as possible and avoided too
much “strategy.” There’s just something about this simple game that’s fun
enough on its own: the countdown, hurrying to pick a corner, moving silently
with everyone else, making eye contact and trying not to giggle, the suspense,
the last-minute mind changes where you dart across the room.
Note from
Amy Hood: I usually have an adult be It because it helps the game to move
faster. If there continue to be 2 kids
left, I just declare them both winners and start a new game. This way the students who are out don’t get
bored. You could also have them bunny
hop, skip, etc. if you’d like instead of just running to a corner.
