Games

Games, games, games! We use games to learn and practice lots of skills. Games can encourage critical thinking, can take the drudgery out of practice and can boost our social skills. We love to play games. Below you will find photos of us playing a math game called Bunny Hop to learn and practice navigating on a number line and a word work game called Sight Word Bingo to help us learn and practice sight words. Sight Word Bingo is available for purchase at Lakeshore Learning  for $10 if you are looking for fun ways to help your child practice sight words. It comes in three levels so you can choose the level that works best for your child.

Sight Word Bingo

Right before break, someone asked me about the Bingo games in our stations. I decided to take that opportunity to get out one of the games and play it with the whole crew. They loved it! After that they were playing the game all the time during stations. Sometimes you just have to be reminded about things that you enjoy. It happens to all of us. Sight Word Bingo is a fun way to practice those sight words that you just have to know. There are several levels and variations available. I got ours at Lakeshore Learning.

Spelling

As we continue to work on spelling more words correctly, I wanted to share a few ideas with you that you can do at home to help your child work on spelling.

Commercial Board Games
Have a family game night and play a board game with word play like Scrabble, Scrabble Jr., Boggle, Boggle Jr, Upwords, Bananagrams, Zingo, Word Yahtzee, and many more.

Other Word Play Games
You can also do word searches, crossword puzzles, hangman (or our version called, Melting Snowman ) or other games that just need a paper and pencil. You can buy books of this type of puzzle or you can go online and print some off. Also, many of these games have online versions that are fun to try, too.

You can also just write a long word on a piece of paper and see how many shorter words you can make using just the letters in that word.

Games to Play in the Car
You can have a spelling bee in the car and give each person a word to spell that is at their level.

You can say a word like "hat" and say what would that word be if I changed the "h" to a "c", to an "f" and so on. Experiment with changing beginning sounds, ending sounds and middle sounds.

Play a game based on word families. Name a word family like the "ate" family. Go around the car and have each person say another word in that family: late, skate, fate, date, gate, and so on.

Online Games
Search for word games on your computer, iPad or smart phone for your child to play. There are many, many variations out there.

Be Creative
Make up your own games. Anything that makes kids think about words and how they are spelled will help.

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Practice basic addition and subtraction facts by playing a game either online or offline. Try clicking here, here or here for ideas or suggestions.

Games

We have learned a couple of new games to play during our Morning Meetings. They would also be fun to play at home or maybe even in the car. The rules for the games are below.

Race To 20

You need a partner. Take turns. On your turn, you may count one or two numbers. So the first person says: "1" or "1, 2." And the second person continues with one or two more numbers. The player who says "20" wins.

Melting Snowman
As we are beginning to work on spelling more words correctly, we are playing a game that will help us with that. It is called Melting Snowman. It is basically just the game Hangman but I didn't want to have to explain "hanging" to first graders so I changed the hanging man to a melting snowman (photo below). Play is just the same, you guess letters to complete the phrase and if you guess incorrectly, a part of the snowman "melts" (is erased). You have to guess the word or phrase before the snowman melts. This would be a great game to play at home with your child. It really makes them think about letters, words and how words work. You can play this on paper but it would work better with a small whiteboard or chalkboard since you are erasing parts of the snowman.

Homework
No homework for the weekend. Enjoy some great books with your child.

IA
Our IA next week is  Music.

Melting Snowman

Melting Snowman
As we are beginning to work on spelling more words correctly, we are playing a game that will help us with that. It is called Melting Snowman. It is basically just the game Hangman but I didn't want to have to explain "hanging" to first graders so I changed the hanging man to a melting snowman (photo below). Play is just the same, you guess letters to complete the phrase and if you guess incorrectly, a part of the snowman "melts" (is erased). You have to guess the word or phrase before the snowman melts. This would be a great game to play at home with your child. It really makes them think about letters, words and how words work. You can play this on paper but it would work better with a small whiteboard or chalkboard since you are erasing parts of the snowman.

Homework
No homework for the weekend. Enjoy some great books with your child.

IA
Our IA next week is Music.

Crew News December 13, 2011

Melting Snowman
As we are beginning to work on spelling more words correctly, we are playing a game that will help us with that. It is called Melting Snowman. It is basically just the game Hangman but I didn't want to have to explain "hanging" to first graders so I changed the hanging man to a melting snowman (photo below). Play is just the same, you guess letters to complete the phrase and if you guess incorrectly, a part of the snowman "melts" (is erased). You have to guess the word or phrase before the snowman melts. This would be a great game to play at home with your child. It really makes them think about letters, words and how words work. You can play this on paper but it would work better with a small whiteboard or chalkboard.

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Home Link 5.2 Frames-and-Arrows Diagrams