Learning Colors with the Shell Game {Free Printable}

Dear Jess,

Teaching my toddler my second language, Cantonese, has been hard. My main hurdle has been remembering to speak it as much as possible. My husband doesn’t speak Cantonese, so our house is filled with English with a dusting of Chinese every now and then.

I found that doing a game or activity with the kiddo has helped spark more conversations or teaching moments in Cantonese. Carving out 20 minutes each day has started a habit which I hope will snowball into speaking more Chinese in general.

One game that I created recently is basically the shell game where you have three cups and a ball and the object of the game is to guess which cup the ball is under after shuffling them. To make it more fun for my three year old, I turned it into what he calls the “Mousey” game.

On each cup I taped a different color house and a picture of cheese to a ping pong ball. The kiddo then pretends to be the mouse that is searching for which house the cheese is in. He’s in a phase where pretending to eat things is way more exciting than actually eating real food, so I thought this was a fun twist.

When I shuffle the cups, the houses are facing me so he doesn’t see which house I put the cheese in. Then when he is guessing which house the cheese is in, he has to guess by saying the color in Cantonese. It’s been a fun way to learn and get some Cantonese injected into our day.

Materials

• 3 Cups
• Ping Pong Ball or small token
• Scotch Tape
• Scissors
• Printout (See below)

Instructions

1. Cut the houses out of the printout and tape three of them to the cups. 
2. Cut out the cheese and tape it to the ping pong ball. 
3. Turn the cups so the houses are hidden from the kiddo. 
4. Put the cheese under one of the cups. 
5. Have your kiddo guess which house the cheese is in by identifying the color. 
6. Repeat guessing until the cheese is found. 

Here is a printout of the Cantonese version:

Download the Colored Houses in Cantonese

I also have just an English version available with a space underneath the house if you’d like to write in another language or leave it blank:

Download the Blank Colored Houses

If you decide to try this game, let me know how your kiddo likes it in the comments below!

Love, 

Tracy