The importance of literature for Children

Children are born with the need to express themselves. They possess a natural instinct to be creative. We can encourage those instincts and basic needs by providing them with unstructured time to play, daydream, and explore. We can encourage their individual instincts for creativity by filling their worlds of wonder with art, music, dance, wordplay and rhyme. Enter the writing process with a childlike sense of wonder and discovery. Let it surprise you. "Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." Albert Einstein One such creative style, involving the skill of writing, can be developed in children at a very young age. Because communication is crucial to our society, teaching children to write well will often lead to children, and adults, who can communicate well. Therefore, finding creative options for our children to develop writing skills will set the foundation for many additional years of creative writing and learning.

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Parts of Speech! Week 2 - 2012

Activity 1: Word Balloon Race


Regular Air Filled Balloons
Flour Filled Balloon without label










Items you'll need:
- 15 balloons
- 3 boxes/bins
- Paper
- Tape

This is an excellent game for children who always want to be up and moving instead of sitting with a paper and pen, who need to learn or practice differentiating nouns, verbs and adjectives. What you will need to do is fill around 15 balloons. After they are full - of either air or flour/rice - you can begin to tape different adjectives, nouns, and verbs onto the balloons. then you can lay them all down on the flour and put your three bins, which need to be labelled a part of speech, on different sides of the room. Game on! Children will take turns, one at a time, being timed at how long it takes them to put all the balloons in the bins. the student with the best time wins!

Optional: this was the first time playing this game, as I had just come up with it, and I noticed some children would be getting them wrong, but getting a better time because they weren't really thinking too deeply. So, should the child with the least amount right but the best time still win? Your choice. For the 11 year olds, I said, for every balloon you get wrong, you add on another 5 seconds. Mix it up, do whatever works for you and your kids!   

Tips: 
- If you would like to make this more challenging, perhaps, you could add more balloons to the pile, or even add more parts of speech (i.e. prepositions or pronouns.)

You may have noticed above, I mentioned flour/rice balloons. When I did this game, the majority of my balloons were filled with flour. The reason for this is to make a new excitement, regular balloons are just regular balloons and it's surprising how much a little thing can change a child's attitude towards an activity, especially when it' comes to writing or grammar. Also, at the end, I announced if everything went well, I would give out the flour balls at the end (because they are actually used as homemade stress balls.). If you are interested in this, here's helpful instructions on how to do so:  link

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Activity 2: Word Hunt!


       After a fast paced race against time aka Word Balloon Race, this is a good cool down activity. Basically, this is a good way for you to recognize where each child is individually in their understanding of the parts of speech. You can do this by handing the sheets out and collecting them after or you could so as I do and verbally read aloud the directions and the sentences, so when everyone has finished the sentence, you move onto the next. Everyone will move along at the same pace that way. But that's not necessary unless you have children who have trouble with their attention spans (ADD or ADHD children).   

Here is a link to download my worksheet for free: http://www.scribd.com/doc/109538497

Enjoy and everyone have a great week! 
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