Obstacle Course Sequencing Activity

This is the perfect sequencing activity to introduce your little learner to the reading comprehension skill of sequencing events.

As part of the kindergarten standards, children need to be able to retell a story including all major events.

"CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.K.2
With prompting and support, retell familiar stories, including key details."

What comes first? Next? Then? and Last? Those are the sequencing words we use to support 5 year olds to tell the story.

Sequencing and retelling a story can be one of the most complicated things we ask children to do at this age, so by starting with this sequencing activity, we are creating a concrete and fun experience they can reference going forward.

The Obstacle Course: An Intro to Sequencing Activity

1. Find a space in your home for your obstacle course. It doesn't have to be big!
2. Place a Post-It at the starting and ending points.
3. Create a line with blue tape of any length.
4. At the end of the line, place 4-6 small pieces of blue tape
5. After that add two rows of blue tape.

See the picture or make your own sequencing obstacle course.

Your child will be hitting the start button (Post-It), balancing across the line, jumping from tape to tape, crawling along the two lines, and finishing by hitting the end Post-it. You can also change up the movements for each section. We ended up making the rule that you had to keep both feet on the tape in order to get through the obstacle course correctly!

How to Play:

1. Invite your child to play: Show them the obstacle course and tell them you're going to play a game where they need to remember the actions they're going to do in the right order. Explain that is called sequencing!
2. Tell your child where the "Start" and "End" Post-its are and that to begin and end the obstacle course, they have to tag those notes with their hands.
3. Demonstrate for them how to move through the course using sequencing words:

• First, I hit the start button.
• Second, I balance across the first line.
• Next, I jump to all the little blue spots.
• Then, I use my hands and feet to touch both lines
• Last, I hit the End Post-It to show I'm done!

4. Have your child complete the sequencing activity as many times as they like. Then ask them to retell or sequence the steps of the obstacle course from start to finish. If they need help remembering the order, they can walk through the course as they sequence it.

Why is an obstacle course the best way to introduce seequencing?

Sequencing can be a confusing skill for little ones but with a clear start and end, along with the blue tape visual of all the movements they did, your child will have greater success in retracing their steps.

The best part is it only took me 2 minutes to prep the whole thing, and we played it over and over again. Your little one can even teach others in the family how to do it, and explaining it to others will be another way they practice sequencing. Give it a try and you'll be working on reading comprehension without even knowing it.

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