Hot Potato (Dative)

     For this game, you need all the students to stand in a circle.  Each student holds a stuffed animal or a figure that has a name that can be made dative.  For this, I generally use first and second declension nouns - ursus, cuniculus, puella, porcus, equus, gallina, vir parvus (lego man), ursus albus, rana,  simia etc. To accomplish this, I have gradually acquired a bunch of stuffed animals and plastic figures of animals and people that I found at various thrift shops over the years.  You also need a small wrapped box, a "donum."  If you have a large class, you should have two wrapped boxes or if your students are cooperative, you can have two circles with one "donum" per circle.  There should be a ratio of 10 students or less  with stuffed animals to 1 donum.  Above is my hard-working cast of "Dative Hot Potato with the two wrapped dona. 

      To play,  all students stand in the circle holding a stuffed animal.  One stuffed animal has the donum and then "gives" it to another animal by announcing it in Latin.  For example, a student holding a stuffed bear might give the donum to the student holding a pig across the circle.  He says, "Ursus porco donum dat" and then hands the gift to the student holding the pig.  Now the pig needs to give the gift away to someone else.   The student with the pig might give hand the gift to a student holding a frog.  Therefore, she might say, "Porcus ranae donum dat" and then give the gift to the student holding the  frog.  Have students practice speaking and handing the gift around the circle.  The gift cannot be passed unless the student can say in Latin who is giving to gift and whom is receiving it. If you have everyone in the same circle, have students pass both gifts  at the same time. 
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     Once students have gotten the hang of what to say, now its time to introduce the game portion.  Play music while students hand off the gift and then after a few minutes, turn off the music.  Whichever person has the gift when the music gets a letter (spell D-O-N-U-M.)  At the end of play,  the student with the least amount of letters is the winner. 

Tips to Make this Game Work:

•  With a squirmy class, it's a good idea to let  students run the music so that you can stand in the circle and monitor the activity. 
• This game works best with a class that is generally cooperative and compliant. It can be hard to manage with students who are impulsive or need careful monitoring.
• When a student is caught with the donum after the music ends,  he or she is NOT out but only gets a letter.  Removing kids from the game, removes them from practice. Everyone plays to the end.
•  This game has a 15 minute run-time.  Change up the music, switch animals to retain students' interest. 

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