Friday, June 30, 2006

Grammar Game

This game I made up a month or two ago. We are using First Language Lessons for grammar. We are almost done with the book. It is only for first and second grade. The book has a list of prepositions for the child to memorize. The list is aboard, about, above, across, after, against, along, among, around, at, before, behind, below, beneath, beside, between, beyond, by, down, during, except, for, from, in, inside, into, like, near, of, off, on, over, past, since, through, throughout, to, toward, under, underneath, until, up, upon, with, within, without.

I was having a problem working on them because the baby would yell, cry and fuss each time we tried to say them. DS is GREAT at memory work but DD is cutting teeth and making it almost impossible to do. This is the solution we came up with. I took some shelf liner and made what I call hop mats. I use Duck brand, Easy Liner, Non Adhesive Solid color cushioned grip top, grip bottom. I LOVE this stuff! Walmart has it. We have no carpet in our house so this keeps the children from sliding on paper. If you have carpet paper might work well. When my son was younger I would make our learning mats 12 in x 12 in, 10 in x 10 in or a few we made 8 inch by 8 inch. Now that he is older and reads well I don't feel the need to do that anymore. I made this set up about 2 inches tall and 4 1/2 inches wide. I wrote a word in the center of each one ane I put a tiny number using a sharpie pen in the top right corner so they stay in the right order. We make a path of them around the house and DS yells them as he wheelbarrow walks on them. DD thinks seeing her brother walk on his hands and Mommy holding his feet funny. She laughs at it and lets us put the words into our memory. The mats are washable and easy to store. Here are some pictures of the game. I can't take a picture of it set up because the list of words is so long it goes all over the house.

Putting the fun back in school.

I am going to try to post a fun game we are doing every week. I will try to do one for my DD (just turned one) and one for our DS who is 6. I don't know if I will be able to keep up with this or not but I will try.