8 Active Ways to Learn Sight Words
8 Active Ways to Learn Sight Words
Learning sight words is the most basic way in which children learn to read. However, it can often be hard for kids to sit down and practice them – especially for boys!
When my son was learning to read, to keep him motivated, I had to develop some ways to keep him moving while learning his sight words!
Here are 8 Active Ways to Learn Sight Words
1. Hot Wheels Parking Lot
My son is obsessed with Hot Wheels, so I took a big piece of paper and drew roads for a town. Off the roads, I created parking spaces. Each parking space included a sight word.
Call out a sight word and have the child drive his Hot Wheel to the new word and park. Once he learned the words, we called out words for each other to drive to.
2. Scavenger Hunts
My son was motivated by special treats! My mom suggested I create a scavenger hunt making up clues with simple words. He had to follow the clues to find his snack at the end. Three years later, we still use the same clue words and the kids still ask to find their after-school snacks this way!
3. Animal Toss
Create (or buy) sight word cards. Spread a few cards out on the floor. Call out one of the words and have the child throw a stuffed animal (or bean bag) to have it land on the word called.
4. Card Race
Spread sight word cards out on the floor. Stand at the opposite end of the room. Call out a word and the child must run down, find the word, pick it up and bring it back.
Variation: I created “active word cards” like HOP, JUMP, RUN, WALK, CRAB WALK, WALK WITH EYES CLOSED. The child runs to the cards, picks one, and must come back to the start line in the manner of the sight word card.
5. Watergun Fun
With a washable marker or tub-specific crayon, write sight words over the shower stall walls. Give the child a water gun. Call out a sight word and they must spray it with the water gun.
6. Body Letters
Have children create each letter of the alphabet together using their bodies. If you have enough children, see if you can make a word!
7. Chalk Words
Write site words (or letters of the alphabet) in the driveway with chalk. Call out words and have the child run and jump on each word. If using letters, write the entire alphabet and have the child try to spell a word. This also works well if a child is on a trike and “bikes” to each word.
8. Bowling for Words
Write sight words on a slip of paper and tape them to a bowling set. Set up the pins and call out a word. The child must roll the ball and try to knock over that pin. This works well if you really spread out the pins so you know which word he is trying to hit!
What other ideas do you have?
Fun with NEW Rice Krispies Multi-Grain Shapes #RKFunShapes
Making Art with Kellogs new Rice Krispies Multi-Grain Shapes Cereal! #RKFunShapes
*Disclosure: I am part of the Kellogg’s Rice Krispies Multi-Grain Shapes Blogger Campaign with Mom Central Canada and I receive special perks as part of my affiliation with this group. The opinions on this blog are my own.*
When I was asked to host a party for kids where they got to try a brand new cereal and then make art projects with it, I jumped at the chance!
Kellogs sent me a box of goodness with a couple of boxes of the new Rice Krispies Mult-Grain Shapes cereal, a few individual cups, and some craft supplies for our party.
Our house is the hang-out spot for kids. So, having a house full of kids for the afternoon was not a big deal, and convincing them to come try a new cereal wasn’t hard either.
For our party we had 8 children. Most were 6 or 7 in grades 1 and 2, and there were 2 girls and 5 boys.
They couldn’t wait to dig into the individual cups !
Knowing that eyes are usually bigger than stomachs at that age, I gave each child his own individual cup of the Multi-Grain Shape cereal as well as a bowl and spoon. The kids poured a small amount of cereal into the bowl and had it with milk, while snacking on the remainder. This way they could try the cereal both wet and dry.
The cereal was a big hit for most of the kids.
“I like it!”
“Two thumbs up!”
“I like it both ways – wet and dry!”
My husband liked it a lot – not just because it has 110 calories per cup! I think he snacked on it just as much as the kids.
The kids who weren’t keen on the cereal, turns out – they don’t like any cereal!
Here are the things that the kids didn’t know – it’s good for them. It’s really good for them!
Every box of Kellogg’s Rice Krispies Multi-Grain Shapes cereal is made with the goodness of wholesome grains and provides 11 grams of whole grains per serving. Kellogg’s Rice Krispies Multi-Grain Shapes is a source of fibre, a source of eight essential nutrients including iron, and is free of saturated and trans fats. Krispies Multi-Grain Shapes cereal, has no artificial flavours or colours. For a burst of the sunshine vitamin, a one-cup serving provides 20 per cent of the daily value of Vitamin D.
That’s a snack or breakfast that you can feel good about giving to your kids!
Once fed, we moved into the dining room where I had the table set up with a variety of craft supplies including:
Paint (water colour and tole paints)
Glue
Paintbrushes
Crayons, Markers, Coloured Pencils
Pipe Cleaners
I showed the children a few samples that I had created to get their creative juices flowing.
Kellogg’s Rice Krispies Multi-Grain Shapes come in four shapes: stars, fish, trees and “me” (mini people). However, the shapes are also indistinct enough that with imagination, they become other shapes.
A fish becomes a rocket, stars become flowers and the trees become leaves!
At first, the children were a bit at a loss of what to make. It made me realize that children aren’t given the opportunity enough to design their own projects, and more often are asked to follow step-by-step instructions.
By the end of the afternoon we had an art gallery of amazing creations! There were seascapes, igloos, rockets, volcanoes, whales, and battle scenes!
Here is a slideshow of their pictures.
The Woman who Stole my Life by Marian Keyes
The Woman who Stole My Life
by Marian Keyes
*I received a copy of this book from Penguin Publishing to review so I can let you know about more great books to pick up! Think of Christmas presents!*
Marian Keyes is an international best seller. You might recognize her from Sushi for Beginners.
I’ve also read Angels.
So, when I was asked by Penguin Publishing to review her newest novel, The Woman who Stole my Life, I jumped at the chance.
What’s it about?
The book is about a woman named Stella Sweeney who one day finds herself completely paralyzed and in the hospital with a rare condition called Guillain–Barré syndrome. She is unable to talk, move or communicate until her neurologist discovers that she can indeed communicate through blinking. He takes it upon himself to write down some of her pithy sayings and eventually has it published under her name when she is cured.
The Woman Who Stole my Life follows several stories lines in different time periods – but they are all Stella’s life. These are differentiated by font and by sections of the book. So, you know where Stella ends up (or where you think she ends up) but, you are not sure how she gets there. It is a very clever literary device that I have not seen before, and it is a lot less confusing than it sounds!
What is the novel really about?
I struggled with the meaning of the title: The Woman Who Stole My Life. There are obvious characters in the book who end up trying to take away from Stella’s life (I won’t go into more detail for fear of giving anything away!)
However, there is more to it than that.
There are so many characters in the book that are trying to be someone they are not, or aiming for things that are not meant for them.
Women who are trying to attain beauty, thinness, and high quality material items. People who are trying to attain inner peace and holiness, and people who just want to be someone else.
I think the take away lesson is to really be yourself. Don’t try to be someone else. It doesn’t work out. Be yourself and good things will happen – even though the journey along the way might be tough.
Good Book Club Questions
This book would make a good book club book as there are some good topics for discussion.
What does the title really mean?
There are many relationships in the book. Whose are built on the firmest foundation?
Would you be able to stand by a partner/friend in times of illness?
Did the ending wrap up too neatly? Was it realistic?
Getting Other Opinions
To get another opinion on the book, I asked my friend to read it. She was heading on a plane ride to New York and needed something to read. This is what she said:
Just finished The Womam Who Stole my Life. Really LOVED it. Great characters, totally different plot, interesting writing scheme with all the different timeframes, loved the sex, cool that it was NYC and so am I!
My only criticism was that I felt that it was unnecessarily long. There were SO many characters…too many for me, and some scenes that were not really doing anything productive. Other than those small dislikes, I really enjoyed the writing and the detailed character development. It’s almost like I could see them in my minds eye.
Overall
Marian Keyes’ book is a quick read (despite being over 500 pages). It is a page turner, as you want to find out how the story comes together in the end.
It would be a great book for a long journey or a summer on a beach.
I definitely recommend picking up a copy or giving a copy as a Christmas Present to a book lover on your list!
Conkers: How to Play
How to Play Conkers!
**A special thank you to my husband for helping to write this blog post!**
Conkers. It’s a British thing!
We call them horse chestnuts. To them, it’s so much more than that! It’s an opportunity for a battle!
According to Wikipedia, Conkers is a traditional children’s game in Britain and Ireland played using the seeds of horse chestnut trees. The game is played by two players, each with a conker threaded onto a piece of string: they take turns striking each other’s conker until one breaks.
My husband who is from England, grew up playing conkers and loves the game! He is now teaching it to our son. Coincidentally, our son’s best friend is now also conker-obsessed because his mom’s partner (also from England) has taught him how to play, too!
The next generation of Canadian children can now be seen playing conkers on the school ground!
But it’s more than just a game. There’s lots of steps to the conkers process.
First you must gather your horse chestnuts. Here in Nova Scotia, that’s not a problem! This phase is a bit of a treasure hunt: each seedcase is unique.
You’re looking for a conker that’s neither too big (splits too easily) or too small (doesn’t hit hard enough). Like Goldilocks’ porridge, the best conkers are the ones that are sized “just right”.
How to Make them
You can play right away with your gathered conkers if you wish.
Drill a hole, with a drill or a nail, through the conker from top to bottom.
Thread a piece of string through and tie a couple of knots in the string for the conker to “sit on”. You want the knot to be pretty big so the string doesn’t slip through the conker when it’s hitting or being hit. The string should be about 15-20 inches in length.
How to Play
Then you play! It’s a two-player game.
One player holds up their conker by the string holding it at arm’s length, while the other player takes their conker and, with one hand holding one end of the string, the other steadying the conker, swings it at the other player’s conker.
Players take turns aiming at each other’s conker.
That sounds harder than it is, so it can be summed up as “hit the other conker with yours.”
However, as my husband says, “this is like describing baseball as ‘hit the ball, run fast, don’t get out’.” Like the complexities of baseball, there’s a lot of dimensions to conkers.
Do you hit hard?
Do you try to go for lots of small hits or a few big ones?
Do you hold the conker string tightly or loosely?
All these can matter to expert conker players, but the bottom line is, even at its most basic, conkers is a heck of a lot of fun.
Winning the Game
The game is won when a conker is broken and falls off the string – sometimes it can be the conker being hit, but just as commonly it’s the hitting conker that shatters into a spray of bits of shell and nut.
The surviving conker is dubbed a “one-er”, meaning it’s won one match.
If it wins two, it’s a two-er, a three-er, and so on.
One other neat thing about the scoring: if your conker beats a conker that has a number of wins, you get to add its wins to your total, plus the one for the victory. So if your three-er beats a five-er, it becomes an nine-er, and so on.
Legends tell of conkers in the fifty-er and higher range, but these are, like the unicorn, legends.
Ways to Prepare a Conker
You can prepare conkers in advance, by baking them in a low oven to dry them out and harden them, making them more fearsome weapons, and harder to crack.
Similar results can be achieved by storing them in salt, or soaking them in vinegar then drying them slowly.
In Britain generations of schoolkids have developed their own methods for producing the perfect conker… and some of these have even gone into the realm of cheating. Ask any British conker player about the Krazy Glue scandal and they’ll know exactly what you’re talking about – the unfair practice of squeezing Krazy Glue down the conker’s string hole to make the conker rock-hard and impossible to break.
This is, as the British say, definitely not fair play. There is a World Conker Championships, held annually, and former champion Charlie Bray has claimed that
“There are many underhanded ways of making your conker harder. The best is to pass it through a pig. The conker will harden by soaking in its stomach juices. Then you search through the pig’s waste to find the conker.”
Now that’s dedication!
For those who really get into the sport and live in the Annapolis Valley, there is an annual championship through the Annapolis Royal Conker Club.
Happy playing!
Learn to Type Touch
Type Kids
*Disclosure: I received a free version of this program to try. This means that my son gets to work for me and learn a new skill, and I can tell you about a great new product!*
I’m not sure that the next generation is going to know how to type! Will everyone be thumb typing when it comes to the workplace?
The art of typing has become a long-lost skill.
I learned how to type when I was in high school. I found a game on a floppy disk called Typing Tutor. It was a DOS-based program that used games to teach you how to type. I spent an entire summer going through the program. Now, I think I am a pretty fast and accurate typer – all thanks to that game!
I remember once, my father stood outside my bedroom door, and heard the keys clunking away. “Stop playing games and get your homework done!”
“I am typing my report!”
I couldn’t have been more proud of myself!
Now, I want to make sure that my kids have those same skills.
So, when I was asked to review a new typing program for kids called Type Kids, I jumped on board!
Here’s what the website says:
Why learn touch typing?
Did you ever realize that almost all text your child will write during his or her life will be done on a keyboard?
Touch typing is the skill to type with all ten fingers and the ability to find all keys blindly, without having to look at the keyboard. After completing the 30 lessons of this online course, your kid’s typing speed will increase up to 5 times. This means that typing text that would have taken 30 minutes before the course will take less than half the time afterwards.
Once your children have learned touch typing they will enjoy it for the rest of their lives. They will save hundreds of hours in the next few years alone.
Type Kids uses a game based on a pirate adventure to help kids learn how to type. Join Captain Forty on a treasure hunt and learn touch typing along the way. At the end of each lesson you will get to play fun games!
By completing various skill-based activities, you earn coins which then help you to unlock games. As you proceed through the levels and the games, your child will receive progress reports via email. This will tell your child about his accuracy, what letters he needs to work on, and give him encouragement to continue playing.
Learning touch typing can be fun! Unlike traditional methods that are boring, children consider our classes to be fun. Kids continue with the course on their own initiative because they want to know how the story unfolds and play the cool touch typing games.
It is also recommended that this is something a child does from time to time, and not all at once. This will keep her motivated and won’t tire of the activity! This works for us. Every few days, Daniel will ask to play again, and it’s great to see that he hasn’t forgotten what he worked on before.
To see what Type Kids is all about, you can sign up to receive the first 3 lessons absolutely free!
Once you are hooked, you can sign up to take the entire course.
Even though the course has been developed for kids more and more parents take it themselves after seeing the progress made by their children.
Course structure
The course consists of 30 online lessons, each of which takes approximately 25 minutes to complete. All instructions are given as clear animations with audio. Explanations from previous lessons can be reviewed at any time.
You can learn touch typing at your own pace. Most participants complete 3 classes a week, which means that the whole course is finished in 10 weeks.
The cost for the complete online course consisting of 30 lessons is $89.95.
You don’t have to take my word for it! Here’s what Daniel has to say:
I like the activities because there are stories you have to help them escape from evil guys. The games are fun, too.
It’s pretty good at teaching me how to type.
I also like the little exercises where you combine both typing hands.
I like learning how to type. It’s important for me to learn how to type.
This is some of my exercising: fdsa jkl; fjdksla; kds;a jfd; as laf; jklaf
Here’s Daniel typing before he started the program:
And here he is after a few weeks and completing just a third of the program:
There is no doubt that Type Kids works!
I look forward to seeing him progress further, and he’s already so proud of himself!
Type Kids is a winner in our household!
Tell me of Brave Women
Tell me of Brave Women: Review
*I received a copy of this book from Hay House Publishers for review*
According to the World Health Organization, statistics show that 35% of women worldwide have experienced either intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime.
35%.
Any violence is too much.
This is is the subject of Tell me of Brave Women by first-time novelist, Laura Riley.
In her book, Riley covers stories of several women and one man from around the world. Evangelina has been made into a sex slave for a drug lord in South America; Thelma witnesses a woman being abused in her bar in the United States; Hassad is a chief investigator in the Middle east who believes it is the right of men to control their wives; while Samara travels the world as a storyteller trying to empower women.
These stories are all interwoven – mostly through a connection with a charitable organization called Secret Sisters that shelters abused women and has homes all around the world.
This book is beautifully written. The characters are all distinct, and even though there are many characters and plots happening at the same time, it is not confusing. Because the book is 500 pages, it looks daunting, and why it took me so long to pick it up. However, it is a very quick read – because of the story line, and also because the author doesn’t get bogged down in details and descriptions. I like that.
The author, Laura Reiley is a psychotherapist, lecturer and aid to battered women. She has studied the status of women in 89 countries and personally believes that abuse will only end when women unite against it. Through her writing she tries to encourage women to come together and demand justice and equality.
Therefore, the novel is a piece to motivate people action.
It acts almost as a utopia – or a guide to utopia where life for women should be and is better.
Tell me of Brave Women includes female characters who have experienced almost every kind of abuse or injustice to women. Many of the issues also wrap up with neat little bows. And, wouldn’t it be nice to have a shelter for battered women in every country and every city with enough funding and a wealthy benefactress to keep them all going?
Although, this may not be possible or realistic, the book paints the picture of how things should be and could be when we start treating women equally.
One thing is for sure; it certainly made me take an even greater interest in my local women’s shelter. You will be inspired after reading this book to do what you can to help women – by not turning a blind eye, by making a financial or tangible donation to a shelter, or by being a good friend to someone who might need you.
I recommend picking up a copy of Tell me of Brave Women by Laura Reiley.
