On another little table sat one of my favorite games for preschoolers.  The Snail’s Pace Race moves at the perfect speed for young children and is noncompetitive.  The children take turns tossing the 6-colored dice and moving the matching snail one space at a time.  Together, they move the snails across the board, inch-by-inch.

If you have never played a noncompetitive game with your children, I think you will find it quite delightful.  You might find the children banding together in the hopes that one snail finishes before another, but they mostly just take their turns and watch the movement unfold.

This is a great game for one-to-one correspondence. For the children that have achieved it, they will not need any support, but for those who have not, an adult or another child might be needed to help them move one square at a time.

The Snail’s Pace game is not about winning and losing, there will be plenty of time for that in all children’s lives, it is about predicting, taking turns and working together.

How to Play:

All of the snails are lined up on the starting line and children guess which one will get to the finish line first.  Each child then takes a turn rolling the die which is colored coded to match the colors of the snails.  If the child rolls “green” then the green snail moves ahead one step.  If the next child rolls “red” then the red snail moves ahead one step, and so on.  As the snails move the children can change their original guesses to whichever snail they think will cross first.  Remember, it is not about winning.

The Snail’s Pace game supports the emerging math concepts of prediction, matching, one-to-one-correspondence, and sequencing.  Your children will love this.

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