This week has been so much fun, getting back together with friends from preschool and meetings some new friends!
Every day we have spent some time focusing on phonics and some time learning sight words.
On Monday, we reviewed the alphabet with an egg matching game. The kids were put in pairs and given bags that had eggs with letters on them and objects that started with those letters. They had to match the objects to the eggs.
For sight words, we played two games. Go Fish has been the favorite game of the entire week. We might have to play again. The kids did a great job of matching the words and learning to read them as they went.
We also played a game called "Find a Fish". There were fish placed around the house with sight words on them. The kids had to find the fish that matched the words on their paper and then trace the words with the correct color.
On Tuesday, we spent our phonics time talking about word families and learning -at words. Word families makes reading so much easier! They learn to recognize the ending quickly and words are much less daunting when you only have to sound out the beginning sound! We played some games with fat bat (a balloon with a bat drawn on it), which the kids loved.
For sight words, our first game was "Sight Word Smash". The kids were given a monster truck and a word to smash. They had to drive the truck along the road to their assigned word and then smash it!
We also played sight word twister. Which works the same as normal Twister, just with words instead of colors.
Our activities on Wednesday were inspired by a couple of Dr. Seuss books, Wacky Wednesday and On Beyond Zebra. If you have not read Wacky Wednesday, put it on your list for the next time you visit the library. It is so much fun to look through the book for all the things that are wacky! And of course, we had lots of wacky things at camp that day!
In the book On Beyond Zebra, a boy tells about all the letters that come after Z. We took inspiration from him and made up some of our own words.
Nonsense words are one of the best way to practice phonics because it ensures that the kids are focusing on the letter sounds and not just memorizing words.
We also played a game similar to a cake walk. The kids walked around the letters and when the music stopped, they were given a letter sound and had to figure out who was standing on the letter that makes that sound.
I didn't get any pictures of the second half of the day. We were too busy! We played two different games. The first was "Whack a Word". The kids were given a word that they had to find in the cards on the floor and then whacked their word with a stick. After that, we pulled out the white boards and played tic-tac-toe. The only change I made was that each space on the board was covered with a post-it note that had one of our sight words on it. The kids had to read the word in order to move the paper and make their mark.
Stay tuned for more fun coming up this week!
