Making Early Literacy Fun

Goblin is 5 years old

Before Goblin started school in September he couldn't read. In fact he didn't know that many letters either. I try to follow his lead, and as he never showed much interest in letters and reading so I didn't push it. Occasionally I had a little wobble and worried that I was disadvantaging him by not getting him started early. But Hublet came to the rescue pointing out various pieces of research that show that early reading doesn't reflect on later attainment. What is important is a love of reading - and that only comes when a child doesn't lose interest. So now that he is being introduced to reading through school I am balancing a tightrope, trying to support his school based learning, but not wanting to force things or make it boring. So we've been playing games. Goblin really enjoyed sight word hide and seek.

I wrote a little bingo grid of simple sight words that have been showing up in his reading books frequently. Then I made another set which I chopped up and stuck (with blue tac) around the house - mostly at his eye level.

I sent Goblin off to find them, bring them back, attempt to read them, and match them to the bingo card. Even when he wasn't able to read the word, the letter recognition and matching are still important steps to literacy. Matching them to the bingo card is also self correcting as he can see if he's got all the words I hid.

Some other games we've been playing include sliding words, haunted house word matching, fishing for letters and making our own simple reading books.

Unconventional board games for prechoolers

(Goblin is 4) 

This post contains Amazon affiliate links. Be warned, if you click through and purchase something I will receive pennies. Obviously I think this is awesome. 

We have been trying to spend less time in front of the TV and more time playing with Goblin. As a result we have been looking for cool games that we can play as a family. The following post promotes three games that I wouldn't normally buy for a three or four year old, but they have become very popular in our house. 

Walk the Plank

We have just acquired a new game that Hublet invested in through Kickstarter (you can buy it here). It's called Walk the Plank and its a really cute little pirate game. Its not supposed to be for kids but what four year old wouldn't want to play this!
The board is simply made of one big square (the ship) and three little squares (the plank) and a circle with a sea monster on it. Each player has three little wooden pirates.
The aim is to get the other pirates to walk the plank, while trying to save at least two of your pirates. You do this using actions dictated by the cards in your hand. 
Each player has the same set of cards, which include actions such as "shove the player on the right", "retract the plank" and "I don't want to die".
The game is supposed to be played with some strategy. You are supposed to choose which cards you want to play and then lay them face down, and take turns to reveal one card, and play it. However, to give Goblin a fighting chance we started playing blind from a shuffled hand. We discovered that not only is this just as much fun, but ironically its not that different to playing with a strategy in terms of your likelihood of winning.
The amazing thing about this game is that we have only played it four or five times and Goblin can already "read" the cards. A combination of recognising the picture on the card and looking at the letters at the beginning of the words. 
STEALTH LITERACY!

Zombie Dice 

This was a game Hublet bought a while ago for us to play together. But its so nice and simple that Goblin can play too, and despite the name its perfectly age inappropriate (except you may not want to go into detail about why Zombies like brains!).
There are 13 dice in the pot, you take three at a time and roll them. The aim is to collect brains. However, if you get a 'shot gun blast' you have to keep it - and if you get three blasts its the end of your turn and it cancels out any brains you collected on that turn.
As well as brains and blasts you can roll feet. If you roll feet you can choose to 'stick' or re-roll. If you re-roll you keep the die with the feet and take as many more dice as you need to make it up to three. 
The dice are 'loaded' by colour. Red dice have more blasts and less brains - therefore you know its more of a gamble to roll again with a red die than a green die.
You carry on taking turns and adding the number of brains you get. The winner is the first person to thirteen brains.
Goblin loves playing this simple game. And I like him playing it because its great for counting and basic addition. 
STEALTH NUMERACY!

Here is a link to Wil Wheaton's Table Top which reviews Zombie dice - it also reviews 'Get Bit' (on our 'to buy' list) which is another game developed by the same maker as Walk the Plank. 

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Kids Coop - Ginger bread letters

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It's Kids Coop. Please link up your child related posts and check out what others have been up to. This week I'm looking the following:

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(Goblin is 43 months)

Goblin has started to take a bit of an interest in letters. I think this has come from nursery where they are trying to get the children to recognise the lets of their name. As a result any time he sees a word beginning with the first letter of his name he says "that word says 'Goblin'". He doesn't quite understand that the letters can make different words that aren't his name. But it's a start. 

I wanted to do some activities at home that would build on this interest, but Goblin can spot a mile off if I try to ram classic education techniques down his throat. And he just won't engage, its of no interest to him. So I have to find ways of incorporating letters into our normal play.

We do a lot of baking so I decided we could make ginger bread letters. We were going to visit friends and we made biscuits for each of the children in the shape of the letter for their name. 

We didn't use biscuit cutters. Instead be cut the letters out with a knife so they were bigger than nornal. 

When we got to the friends house I got Goblin to hand them out, thus having to match letter to name off child.

And now to the linky

Kids Co-op Link Up

 

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Its Kids Co-op time again. Please link up your favourite kid orientated posts (as many as you like) and check out some of the others. Don't forget to leave a comment if you love what you see. Here is what I am linking up:

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(Goblin is 35 months)

I have learnt from experience that trying to "teach" Goblin using structured activities does not work. However I do want to start introducing him to the concept of letters. So I thought I would use letters as part of his favourite play activity - digging. 

Goblin already had his digger and tractor out so I threw some letters into the mix - I used the LeapFrog Fridge Phonics Magnetic Alphabet Set.

As Goblin picked them up with his digger and dumped them into the trailer I told him what the letters were. Sometimes I'd say, "do you know what this letter is, its a ggggg" and he'd say "geh" (the phonic sound). I was quite surprised how many he knew. But that is the mad thing, he does pick up a lot through play and discussion, so I don't feel the need to sit him down and teach because he'll pick it up as long as he's exposed to it over time.

I don't know if that is the same for every child or whether that is just how Goblin learns, but it certainly suits my parenting style - somewhat lazy.

And now to the linky, what have you guys been up to this week?

Kids Co-op Link up (#4 for me)

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Yes its that time of the week again, show me what amazing things you've been up to by linking up to Kids Co-op today (or any time until next thursday).

I thought I'd show you some of my and Goblin's handy work first. A while ago I started doing some letter work with Goblin but quickly dropped it because he wasn't very interested and it felt a bit forced. As part of this earlier work we started doing pictures of letters - starting from Z and working backwards. I decided this week that although I didn't want to carry on the more intense letter work it would still be good to have visual aids for the alphabet, so we did some more of the letters of the alphabet pictures.

Here is our V for volcano - the lava is melted crayon shavings. 

This is our X for x-ray made from craft foam.

And this is the one Goblin enjoyed the most - U for under the sea. He stuck all the stickers on the paper - which is why the dolphin is swimming upside down. 

We've stuck our new letters with our previous ones to build up our alphabet along the stairs. That way when we go up to bed, or come down in the morning we can talk about the letters.

Now over to you and your amazing creations.

Bean Bag Tutorial

A while ago I made some upper case alphabet bean bags. Then my friend told me that in the UK kids are taught the lower case alphabet first. So I set about making some lower case ones too. They are very simple to make so anyone with any sewing skills probably doesn't need a tutorial, but I'm gonna do a little one anyway.

First find a font you like for your bean bags: Mine is Century Gothic for the Mac, size 400. To ensure that your letters will fit your felt you can measure a print out of the biggest letters M and W. I used 4inch felt squares from the Felt Fairy. Printed out an alphabet, pinned each letter to a felt square and cut them out.

Cut out 26 strips of cotton, about 6 inches by 12 inches. Pin each letter to a cotton strip. The letter needs to be positioned closer to the middle of the folded strip because you will need a margin on the other three sides when sewing the edges. 

You will want to sort out the B, D, P and Q (if your q doesn't have a tail) so that they are all the right way round when pinned onto the cotton.

Use blanket stitch to sew the letters onto the cotton strips with embroidery thread. Machine sew the three edges of the cotton strip with the letter on the inside, leaving a two inch gap at the final edge. Then fold the letter to the outside and fill the bean bags with spilt peas or lentils (A jug with a spout is best for this - funnels tend to be too narrow). Finally hand sew the 2 inch hole up.

Beautiful beanbags, ready for upper and lower case matching games; hammering the right letter games, throwing your name games; and so much more.

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On our Shelves

(Goblin is 28 months)

Today I took the day off work so I could go and observe Goblin at nursery. They only do half day 'viewings' so I had the rest of the day off. I had planned to watch some really bad TV and sleep, but instead I started obsessing over Goblin's shelves - I haven't rejuvenated them in a while because he's been so into his trucks, rainbow rice and painting that they haven't got a look in. 

 I was excited by Goblin asking for me to draw letters in the shaving foam at the weekend. So I thought I'd do a bit more letter work, but using things he is already interested in. So I laminated pictures of things beginning with B, D and T. I basically chose the letters that had the most amount of vehicles words associated with them.

 So B is Bus, Bin lorry (sorry US readers you won't be able to use that one), Boat and Bulldozer. D is Dumper truck, Digger, Dinosaur and Dog - I thought there were more vehicles beginning with a D but then I couldn't think of any. And T is for Tractor, Trailer, Tank and Train (although I also had Tanker and Truck which I may yet print out if this turns out to be a popular game). I have picked out B, D and T from the home made letter bean bags so Goblin can line up the vehicles under the correct letter. I expect this will be beyond him, but even if I have to tell him the right letter I can point out the matching opportunity with the first letter of each word.

 I also thought I'd try the salt tray mark making again - if I can stop kitty trying to use it as a litter tray. They had one at Goblin's nursery and the two year olds were encouraged just to play in it with tools. I think this is a great idea, but it won't hurt to show him that you can make a letter shape. I used sugar rather than salt this time, mainly because I don't want Goblin eating a bunch of salt (yeah I know eating a bunch of sugar isn't great either - I have odd logic sometimes).

 I've put the bottle top letter matching back out. Last time this was on the shelves Goblin just threw the bottle tops around the room and wasn't at all interested in matching. We'll see how it goes.

 He loves his Usborne Trucks and Diggers Snap and seeing as we are trying to match vehicles to letters I thought this would compliment it quite well. We play two games with these, one is simple matching and the other is the memory game where I lay out about 6 pairs upside down and he has to find the matching pairs. I was surprised how good he was at this last time we played.

We haven't had the Cutting Fruit out for a while. I'd like Goblin to learn to use a knife so he can do more in the kitchen, and this is nice safe practice which I don't need to keep a continuous eye on.

Goblin has NEVER played with the button snake I made him. I have had it out on the shelves so many times, I even rejuvenated it by cutting the squares of felt into animal shapes and he still ignored it. I'm going to try again - ever the optimist. Buttoning is actually really difficult. I hadn't thought about it until I tried to show Goblin, and then I realised you need both hands and quite a bit of coordination which may be why he shuns this toy.

Finally some simple number matching using some printables I laminated ages ago. I feel very guilty because I can't remember which blog I downloaded these from. I thought it was 1+1+1=1 but it doesn't have their watermark on it. If this printable is from your blog please let me know so I can link to it. 

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