Little Brother loves dinosaurs. We've been having fun with this simple match-up game. In a basket, I put seven of our toy dinosaur and the corresponding flashcards ($1 from the Target). Whenever the mood strikes him, Little Brother matches up the dinosaurs with the cards.
It was really interesting to watch him race through the first five matches and then take a long pause on the last three, which looked very similar. To my amazement, he ended up getting them the all correct.
Little Brother (3) has always loved dinosaurs. Right now he's really interesting in finding differences and similarities. So this activity is a "perfect match" for him.
When children read words, they may not necessarily be conceptualizing their meaning. This past week, I used a simple strategy with my boys called the Text-Picture Match. Not only did it allow me to check their comprehension, but it also helped reinforce the concept for them that they should seek meaning in the text they are reading.
My boys are seriously into the song "I'm a Believer" by The Monkees (or "The Face Song" as Little Brother likes to call it). I know it's not as highbrow as Robert Frost, but I'm a believer in the benefits of using a child's interests to help them learn.
So, I wrote the lyrics of the song on sentence strips, hung them up in the school room, and put track number four of the Monkees Greatest Hits on repeat. The boys were in heaven listening to their favorite song as many times as they wanted.
It's amazing how quickly kids learn new things when music is involved!
Big Brother used the pointer to identify each word as it was being sung. He can now read a bunch of new words, such as "believe", "disappointed" and "haunted".
I drew a few simple symbols under some of the words (face☺, love♥, sunshine☼, rain☔) to help aid with word identification.
We discussed the meaning of the song. I was so pleased to hear Big Brother explain to Little Brother that the singer was so sad about not being in love that it made him have bad dreams.
We talked about the concept of a chorus, and I designated the beginning and end of the chorus in this song with a star.
Although my original intention with this activity was to work on reading skills, I realized how much further I could go in the way of music appreciation or even poetry.
So, there's not a trace of doubt in my mind that our little monkeys learned a lot this week from The Monkees. Next week, perhaps we'll work on Frost.
For your listening pleasure, here's "The Face Song"....
