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In Think Outside the Classroom, I included about 5 “idea corners” to spark creativity. I thought I’d share one of those here…
Idea Corner:
Pick a “word of the day” and see how many times you can use it in the day, and encourage your children to do the same. Make up a song about the word. While reading Winnie the Pooh, I ran across the word “revolving”. I stopped and said, “Do you know what revolving means? It means to go in circles, or spin around.” And then I asked one of my children to stand in the middle of the floor and spin in circles. While she did that, I sang a chorus to the tune of “A Tisket, a Tasket” that went:
“Revolving, revolving…Alexa is revolving…’round and ’round, she spins around, Alexa is revolving.”
5 comments
At breakfast each day we do something similar. I pick a word out of the dictionary and explain it to the children. Then, each child tries to use it in a sentence. To my amazement, they are using the new words I am teaching them. This week we learned barricade, awkward, and guide dog. They used ALL of them at one point or another. And now, they are constantly asking me what a word means if they don’t know what it means! It has been a great activity for us!
Another good vocab exercise that my mother swears by and–even though I complained at the time–I now do, too: Tell them to look it up! Something about having to drag out that big dictionary and flip through all those words, then read the definition aloud to my mother; well, it engaged all my various learning sectors, and those words really stuck with me; even the tricky ones 🙂 Of course, this is only for kids who are of reading age.
It kind of goes along with the idea Jessica Hulcy (KONOS) has… for example, she always says that it is much better to have the child go outdoors and “do” ten verbs than to merely have him write them down on paper.
Thanks for the tip, Kelly! Great idea.
oh I love it!
Those are great ideas!