OuiSi · Focus and attention

Hunt and swap

Beta

Grades K–5 Teaching 25 min Plus 2 to set out, 2 to clear Class any size Set any Space children move around

set out 2′ Card to object 6′ Object to new card 8′ Trace it back 8′ Close 3′ clear 2′

Goal: Children bounce back and forth between the deck and the room — card to object, object to a new card, and round again — until they are looking at a familiar space properly.
Materials: One OuiSi Photo-Card set, spread face up on a central table. One card per child to start.

K–1: Two swaps, working in pairs — about 17 min
Grades 2–3: Four swaps, working alone — the full 25 min
Grades 4–5: No color connections after the first swap — the full 25 min

1 · Card to object

6 min

Everyone takes one card and stands up. The rest of the deck stays spread on the table.

Find something in this room that connects to your card. Go and stand next to it.

Walk round and ask a few of them.

What is the connection?

Color and shape first, and that is fine. The loop in step two is what pushes them further.

2 · Object to new card

8 min

Now go back to the table. Leave your card and take a different one that connects to the object you just found.

Then find a new object for the new card. Keep going.

This is the loop, and it is what makes the activity more than a scavenger hunt. Each swap travels one step further from where the child started, and by the third or fourth they are somewhere they could not have planned.

Let it run. Four or five swaps is plenty.

3 · Trace it back

8 min

Everyone sits with whichever card they are holding.

Tell us where you started and where you ended up. Name every step.

The chains are long and nobody could have predicted them, and saying the whole thing out loud from memory is real work. Take three or four, not everybody.

Then the question worth asking in a room they sit in every day.

What did you notice in this room today that you have never noticed before?

4 · Close

3 min

Hold up the card you ended on. Would you have picked it at the start?

Watch for

Boundaries first. Say where they may go before anyone stands up. This room only, or this room and the corridor, and stay where you can be seen.
Crowding at the table. Spread the deck across two tables if the group is large, or send half the room at a time.
Breaking the loop. Some children will keep swapping cards without finding an object between. The alternation is the activity, so redirect gently.
Children who like rules will ask what counts as a connection. Anything they can explain. Hold that line and they relax into it.

Adapt

First week of school — this is the best use of it. Children learn the room while learning each other.
Motor or vision needs — a partner fetches while they choose, or run it from a seat by naming what they can see.
Attention and ADHD — one of the few guides in this set with real movement built in. Lean on it.
Outdoors — works on a walk, in a yard, or on a field trip with ten cards in a pocket.
Follow-on — children photograph their favorite object and make a Photo Card of their own for it.

Curriculum links. Connecting an image to a physical object · Stating the basis of a connection out loud · Retracing and naming every step of a sequence · Noticing detail in a familiar space.
Standard codes vary by state and district — these are the skills exercised, for you to map to your own.

From OuiSi Scavenger. The alternating hunt, used for attention and for learning a familiar space properly.
Screen-free unless you take photographs in the follow-on.