Mission:

Giving you the tools and skills to help you develop into a stronger teacher of literacy!

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Building Words with Bottle Cap Magnets

Here is a fun summer project to do with the kids that will reinforce reading.  Use the directions from Family Fun Magazine to make magnets, however, add letters to the inside so your child can build words.  

Preschoolers can practice learning the letters and spelling their names and some other simple words like cat, dog, mom, dad, and beginner preprimer sight words such as: can, like, and other preprimer words on the Dolch List.  Click on the word Dolch List and it will take you to a listing of all the most frequent words children learn as beginning readers.  

Older children can practice higher level words on the Dolch list as well as build word families.  Common words families include: -an, -ad, ed,-en, -it, -in, -op, -ot, -un.  For a full list click on : Word Family Lists

The goal is for the kids to have fun with making the words!

Keep It Under Your Cap...by Family Fun Magazine

http://familyfun.go.com/crafts/keep-it-under-your-cap-858439/?cmp=SMC-FB_FFUN_[keep-it-under-your-cap]_[crafts]_[familyfun.com] 

 From FamilyFun Magazine
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Total Time Needed:
1-2 Hours
Think small! These tiny, jewel-like bottle-cap magnets will look fabulous on your fridge door.
Materials
  • Paper
  • Clear packing tape
  • Quarter
  • Tacky glue
  • Bottle cap
  • Sequins, rhinestones, beads, googly eyes, and other small decorations
  • Clear sealant
  • Hot glue
  • 1/2-inch-wide magnet
Instructions
  1. Start by choosing a piece of paper for the collage base. Cover both sides of the paper with clear packing tape (the liquid sealant you'll use later might discolor it otherwise). Using a quarter as a template, cut a circle from the covered paper and use tacky glue to affix it to the inside of a bottle cap.
  2. Now, add sequins, rhinestones, beads, googly eyes — anything that's fairly flat and small — with glue. Let the glue dry, then brush on a generous coat of clear sealant. (In our tests, DecoArt Triple Thick gave us the glossy finish we wanted.)
  3. When the sealant is dry, use hot glue to attach a strong 1/2-inch-wide magnet to the back of the cap.

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Building Words and Phoneme Segmentation

If your child can identify the letters of the alphabet and state their corresponding sounds, you can then play with rhyming words.  When you child has a good grasp of rhyming and can give you a rhyming word for any words you give them, your child is ready to play with words in a new way.

***The new game involves segmenting words or breaking words into pieces.  With this exercise, you are segmenting the beginning sound from the remainder of the word.

For example, my word begins with b (say the b sound) and it ends with -ug when we put it together we have b-ug...bug.

If your child doesn't get it at first, don't worry, just keep trying stressing the beginning sound first then the word ending.


Word families are great for this exercise.  More examples include:

c and at ...cat
f and an...fan
b and all...ball
b and ed...bed
s and it...sit
p and in...pin