Monday, March 21, 2011

Fishing for Letters



Little Charlie (Age 5) and I work on one letter per session. Usually we complete a number of worksheets to practice phonics and printing, maybe read a story, put together a small story book of that day's letter and finish with an arts and crafts activity or a game. Some days it's a real challenge to find something that really grabs Charlie's attention. Some days I just wing it and hope for the best.

Today was F day and little Charlie and I were nearing the end of our session when I had a thought. "Fishing" starts with F and Charlie would love fishing. I grabbed a chopstick and tied a piece of string to one end. To the end of the string I tied a metal paperclip. Then I went to the kitchen and got my big stockpot and carefully laid the most commonly used letters of the alphabet in the bottom, magnet side up. I put the stockpot on a stool - just high enough that you couldn't see the bottom, and tested my little game. I cast the line into the pot and jiggled it about. Sure enough, when I pulled my line up, there on the end was a magnetic letter.

Rather than just have him identify the letters as he pulled them out of the pot, I decided to take it a step further. I got out my mini dry erase board and wrote down our names. Next to our names I put 3 blanks, like so _ _ _. I decided to compliment the lesson with the short A sound by putting the A magnet in the middle, like so _ A _. When Charlie pulled a letter out of the pot, he was asked to put it either at the beginning or the end of the word. Then it was my turn. We repeated the steps until we had a full word. Then I asked him to sound them out. Keep in mind that Charlie has been asked a couple of times to sound out first words and it has always caused him great anxiety. Today, however, was different. I told him that if the letters on the board made a word then he would get a point. Without even hesitating he sounded out the letters. Each time he read the word, he would look at me and tell me if he thought it was a real word or not. The ones he knew for sure, like hat, were the most exciting.

Charlie absolutely LOVED this game and he didn't even realize he was reading. I believe I will try variations of this game with different vowel sounds in the middle. It seemed to work really, really well.

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