Word Wizard

One of our favorite word work lessons is Making Words. The students use a set of letters to build various words that build up to a mystery word. This helps with reading, writing, and spelling. A fun twist on this can be found online with the interactive Word Wizards. In Word Wizards, students choose a well-known picture book. They are then given a set of letters and a clue. They answer the clue by building it with the letters.

Making Words

We use a word activity in class called Making Words by Patricia Cunningham. In this activity the students use a set group of letters to brainstorm and build various words. The set of letters when put all together make a mystery word. Usually the students cut out letters to manipulate but occassionally we do a quick version on the board if we only have a few minutes of time. I write a set of letters on the board and have the students brainstorm as many words as they can. Parents, this would be a great activity for your child to do on a piece of paper in the car for those long road trips or when you are waiting at the doctor, etc.

Christmas Gifts that Teach

Several parents have asked if there are any specific items that you can buy to help your child with their reading and math. My best advice is to find games that teach. Below are a few games and toys that I highly recommend:

• Scrabble Flash - Students make as many words out of the letter combinations as possible. It is very similar to the Making Words activity that we do in class each Friday. Students will start to see patterns in words as they can change only one or two letters to make a new word. The great thing about this game is that it has automatic scoring and can be played independently.
• Bananagrams - The game is played like Scrabble but does not require the board and is easy to travel with. Through playing with words, students will begin to make more connections between the spelling of words.
• Bendomino - This is a twist on classic dominoes, which I also love. Dominoes help students with number recognition and can be used as manipulatives in a variety of ways. As you play dominoes with your child, have them add the two numbers of the domino before placing it down.

With those recommendations, I must say that I believe children do need time to just play and be kids. It is great to find teachable moments at home to reinforce what we are learning at school, but it is just as important to let children express themselves in stress-free, unstructured play. For that, I recommend having a supply of crayons, markers, blank paper, Legos and other types of blocks.

Making Words

One of our favorite activities in class is to make words from a combination of set letters. When all the letters are used they make a mystery word. This activity helps with their spelling, reading, and writing. The students are given a set of letters that they cut out and move around to make new words. The letters are color coded so they can easily see that every word needs a vowel. The students take notes on their paper about words they created and then share their lists at group time. Words that are correct are added to the white board for the other students to write down. Words that are not true words we call "Dr. Seuss" made-up words and discuss why they are not correct. The students love to be the first one to come up with the mystery word. We also talk about letters we can add or take away to create new words. Last week we played the game using the word "kitchens" and the students came up with 57 words on their own which set a new class record!

A great way to practice this at home is to give your child plastic letters (can be found in the dollar areas of Wal-Mart or Target) to move around. You can also have your child write down a specific word (longer words work best) and then have them brainstorm a list of words that can be made using on the letters in that word. You can also visit the website Wordle to visit their Words in Words page which will generate a list of words that can be made using specific letters.