Thinking Outside the Box

One of the great things about being a parent and not a teacher, is that you do not have to stick to the school curriculum. You can do things that are fun, creative, and help your child grow in different ways.

Idea – tooth picks connected by mini marshmallows. See who can build the tallest structure – if you want to be competitive. Allow marshmallows to dry overnight and display crafts on a dark piece of cloth.



Gumdrop Tower

Better idea – Make a Gumdrop Tower to support a candy bar.
- Use tooth picks and gum drops.
- Or instead of the tooth picks, use a bag of spaghetti.
- Give each group the same number materials to begin. See who can make the tallest tower to support a candy bar.
- This was done by teachers at a university.


Find more fun activities to keep you young people busy through the cold months of the year. These activities help grow their brains too! http://pbskids.org/zoom/printables/activities/

Helping Young Readers with Comprehension

Good readers do not just read a text. They think about it before, during and afterwards. They predict, connect vocabulary and meaning to prior knowledge, draw conclusions, see causal relationships, compare, contrast, and visualize.     Wow!

There are things you can do to start good comprehension thinking habits in young children before they can read for themselves.

Anticipate – Before reading, look at the front cover and discuss what you think the book might be about. Then if you want, peek at the pictures inside and guess the story.

Read the story. Discuss words and ideas children might not understand. Help them connect words and ideas to things they already know.

After reading, discuss what you thought the book would be about and then what it really was about.

For beginning to intermediate readers a great exercise during or after reading is to make a diagram (“graphic organizer”) of what the story is about with a circle around the main idea in the middle and spokes around it, representing supporting details.
For free graphic organizers of different types go to http://www.eduplace.com/graphicorganizer.

Make a Book Together

It has always been my dream to write books together as a family.

One day, my 5 year-old daughter decided she wanted to make a book with me.

• She put the pages together, stapled them, put stickers on and colored in the sky.
• Then she said that it was my job to put in the words.
• I asked her what she wanted to call the book. “Zebras of Cazooby” was her reply.
• She also wanted me to write everything on the cover that a regular book has, such as the author (me) and illustrator (her).
• After it was finished, she showed the book to people, reading the words to them.

Other book making ideas have you punch holes in the paper and thread yarn through the holes.

You can use any kind of paper, cardstock, colors, stickers, glitter glue, crayons, or cut out pictures from magazines.

Other Resources:

• Make Books on your computer using Real E Writer, FREE download.
This simple program allows you to insert photos, scans and words before printing out small books.

• Order inexpensive empty books with hard covers from Barebooks.com!

More online great book making ideas: http://library.thinkquest.org/J001156/makingbooks/makeown.htm

A Word & Its Meaning – Put it Together with a Picture

In kindergarten, my daughter refused to read words in isolation. So I started drawing pictures around the words to give them context.

Upon looking for flashcards with pictures, teachers told me about the Bob Books. They are the only kind of reading system that incorporates words with pictures. Cheaper yet, we turned to the Dick and Jane books. These books have the sight words and pictures with enough repetition to learn the words.

How can we make learning sight words fun and effective?

Make your own pictures that go with word meanings.

In fact, have your child dream up pictures that go with word meanings – preferably with a friend! Use a white board as this takes a lot of erasing.

This is an effective learning strategy for primary, intermediate, and ESL students to connect the meanings and spellings of words.

 At the bottom of this entry is a page from Purple Cows & Potato Chips (1995) which gives more examples of how words can be turned into pictures.

One More Spelling Helper

http://www.spellingcity.com/ is a fun place to work with spelling words.

At the end of a long day, you and your child might not feel like doing formal spelling exercises. Instead, you can enter and save the word lists on Spelling City. The server automatically creates context sentences for the words and generates games.

Your child can learn new words, test themselves online, play hang mouse, matching games, cross-word puzzles, word finds and make printable worksheets.

Free!