Learning Outside the Books - Guilt-Free Homeschooling

Workshop Wednesday: Freebie Magnets

June 13, 2012 by CarolynM 2 Comments

Magnets are a wonderful learning tool for tactile learners. There is something about that magical, magnetic connection that appeals to fingers of all ages. Fortunately, most of us have a ready supply of free advertising magnets from the pizza place, the hairdresser, the auto mechanic, the new phone directory, and every politician who marches in a summer parade. Peel your collection off the refrigerator, and let’s turn them into some great learning aids. I’ll list several possible uses and some basic how-to’s for the magnets. You’ll want to analyze what topic your students are struggling with or where they need the most help, and then focus your efforts there. Students can also help make magnetic learning aids, and helping to make them means the learning begins right away.

Stickers are probably the easiest things to turn into magnets, since you just have to stick them onto a magnet and cut around the stickers with scissors or a razor knife (such as an X-Acto). I have used scrapbooking stickers that looked like Scrabble letter tiles, foam letter stickers that were shaped like small jigsaw puzzle pieces, and 3-dimensional plastic stickers with raised animal shapes. The puzzle piece stickers were slightly tricky because of their irregular shapes, but I cut the magnets into squares small enough to fit in the center of each sticker, and then (after attaching the magnets) dusted the surrounding sticky edges with baby powder, using a dry artist’s paintbrush. It took two rounds of dusting powder to get the foam pieces to stop sticking to each other, but I’ve had no problems with them since then. With regularly shaped stickers, it is fairly simple to line them up next to each other (as many as will fit on the magnet), press them down securely, and then cut them apart. If your stickers have rounded corners, cut them apart as squares first, then round off each corner with scissors. There may be a strip of magnet left at the side that is too narrow to hold more stickers, but hang onto that piece—you’ll cut it up and use it later.

Once upon a time, my kids had some puffy stickers that they wanted to be able to save and reuse. Magnets to the rescue! I covered the backs of the stickers with adhesive plastic, then attached a magnet to each one. Those cartoon character magnets became a great quiet toy for imaginative play.

Craft foam sheets allow you to make your choice of subject matter by writing on the foam with a permanent marker, such as a Sharpie. (Some foam sheets can even be purchased with a magnetic backing already attached!) I had some magnetic strips that were adhesive on one side (leftovers from a weather-stripping project), so I cut squares of craft foam the same width as the magnetic strip, stuck them on, and cut the magnetic strip between the squares. Adding numbers to each square produced magnetic manipulatives for math! I drew arithmetic operation symbols on a few more squares to complete the set.

Laminated placemats have been featured in a previous Workshop Wednesday article, but I will mention them again here for good measure. That example showed a periodic table of elements placemat that I turned into magnets, but any subject matter will do. If a placemat doesn’t lend itself to a building block format (such as the periodic table) or a map (USA, etc.), perhaps you can cut it into a simple jigsaw-style puzzle to entice your kids to play with the magnetic pieces and learn the information.

I have also used the plain (back) side of a thick foam-like vinyl placemat by cutting it into the desired shapes and attaching a small piece of leftover magnet to the back of each piece (formerly the front of the placemat). Adhesive squares made for scrapbooking, card making, and other popular paper crafts work great for attaching magnets (without the mess and hazards of hot glue guns). These vinyl-foam placemats are a bit heavier than craft foam and are made of a material that is not subject to the static electricity that can leave you covered in bits of craft foam for the rest of the day. Yes, that is a magnetic map of Iowa’s 99 counties, made from the backside of an orange jack-o-lantern placemat, but please don’t feel you have to try something quite so ambitious as your first project (that thing was tricky!).

A USA jigsaw puzzle (cut on state borders) received new life as a magnetic puzzle with the addition of a magnet square to the back of each puzzle piece.

Letter game tiles were repurposed with the addition of a magnet on the back of each tile.

Sandpaper cut into small squares can be glued to cardstock for added strength and then attached to a magnet. Grab your Sharpie marker again and write or draw letters, numbers, symbols, etc. for magnetic manipulatives with a bonus tactile texture. I made some in 1” squares, but don’t let that limit your imagination!

Funny facial features (eyes, eyebrows, noses, mouths, mustaches, ears, etc.) drawn on cardstock and attached to magnets become a fun game for preschoolers (I saw that idea on Pinterest, but I don’t know who originated it; someone deserves the credit!). Now what if you used the same principle for body parts and made interchangeable heads, bodies, legs, feet, arms, and tails for a magnetic build-a-monster activity? Build-a-bug, build-a-robot, build-a-car, build-an-animal, build-an-alien—the possibilities are endless! Your older students may have fun creating these magnets for their younger siblings, and they’ll learn some great problem-solving skills in the process. I wonder if we can make these small enough to fit in this empty Altoids tin? Hmmm… then Mom could keep it in her purse for Timmy to play with in church or while waiting in a restaurant!

So let’s review: we’ve discussed making magnets for letters to use for phonics and spelling practice, numbers and operation symbols for math, chemical elements for science, and states for geography. Need more ideas? How about geometric shapes, colors, incrementally-scaled pieces for number value (make them match the size of other math blocks you may own), fraction pieces, or pattern blocks. Have a struggling reader? Use the “magnetic poetry” type of word magnets (purchased or home-made) to focus on reading one word at a time, then adding them together to build a sentence. Have a struggling writer? Those same magnetic words can help him write sentences, stories, or poetry, since it can be much easier to rearrange someone else’s words than it is to think up new words from your own head. Pick up a small, inexpensive, cardboard skeleton party decoration, cut it apart into individual bones or groups of bones (such as the rib cage, hands, feet, etc.), attach some magnets, and you have an anatomy learning aid. Plastic or cardboard coins can become magnetic money manipulatives (say that three times really quickly).

When you have accumulated a large supply of educational magnets, the traffic in front of your refrigerator may get overly congested. Solution: steel cookie sheets or steel pizza pans are lap-sized and much more portable than the refrigerator door. If you need to shop for steel pans, you may want to take along a small magnet in your pocket for testing purposes. (That nosy store clerk will leave you alone when you explain that you’re obviously shopping in the kitchen section for educational materials.)

Now before I forget, there is one other accessory that makes magnetic learning aids even more beneficial: paper. I drew a Sudoku grid large enough to hold our number magnets and placed it on the cookie sheet, using the magnets to hold it in place. Ta-da, magnetic Sudoku can take the visual puzzles from a book or newspaper and turn them into a tactile masterpiece. A worksheet with fill-in-the-blank problems could hold magnets on those blanks instead of written answers. Your kids might choose to color an underwater background picture to place behind their letter magnets, just because they are learning to spell the names of ocean creatures.

Learning isn’t limited to books, life doesn’t happen between the pages of a workbook, and we learn what we enjoy. Magnets get fingers involved, and fingers love to learn! So what are you waiting for???

Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Homeschool How-To's, Learning Outside the Books, Learning Styles, Math, Phonics, Preschoolers, Reading, Roadblocks to Learning, Science, Spelling, Tactile Learning, Workshop Wednesday, Writing

Workshop Wednesday: Hopscotch – A Powerful Learning Game

May 23, 2012 by CarolynM 6 Comments

Who knew that a patch of concrete, some chalk, and a couple of rocks could produce a fun way to learn just about anything? When I was a little girl, I played hopscotch in the traditional way, tossing my stone and jumping from square to square, just as a game for practicing my tossing and balancing skills. Hopscotch can also be used as a kinesthetic learning method, involving the big muscles of arms and legs, pumping information through the blood vessels to the brain. I can see many other uses for the basic method of hopscotch, providing a great method for teaching preschoolers, kinesthetic learners, active children, or anyone else who just needs a break from sitting at a table for one more worksheet.

Let’s start by changing the standard hopscotch pattern to a row of 10 squares, numbered from left to right, and let your little ones practice counting as they hop from box to box and back again—tossing a marker stone or beanbag can be used later as their counting skills increase. Do the same thing with a row of ABC’s, first for letter recognition and later for reciting the sounds made by each letter or for a word beginning with that letter. Mom can say a word, and the child can hop to the letter that begins the word. For more advanced students, change the ABC’s to a grid pattern, and try “Twister Spelling” by putting hands and feet in the correct squares to spell the word. Use multiple beanbags, poker chips, or plastic yogurt lids for markers, and challenge your kiddies to spell out words by placing their markers on the correct letter squares.

You can also practice addition and subtraction facts with a hopscotch grid. Draw a 1-10 grid by making two rows of five squares each: 1-5, 6-10. Make these boxes large enough for your student to stand in, sort of like a hopscotch game. Start with simple addition problems by asking: If you put down [this many] markers, starting with Box #1 and putting one marker in each box, and then you add [this many] more markers, how many boxes will have markers in them? What is the largest number box that contains a marker? Repeat this activity with as many different number combinations as possible, until your student knows addition facts from 1-10 so well that he cannot be stumped. Then draw two more rows of boxes, extending the grid to 20 (11-15, 16-20), and continue the addition practice with problems up to 20. You can also work on learning doubles in the teens: 5+5=10, 6+6=12, 7+7=14, 8+8=16, 9+9=18, 10+10=20. These facts will help him with problems where the answer is between 10 and 20.

Does one of your students have trouble with subtraction? Using the 1-20 grid, pick a problem that may have stumped your child, like 13-9=? In this example, cover all numbers larger than 13. Ask: If you put down 9 poker chips, with one on each box, starting with 13 and counting down, what is the largest number box that will still be showing? If he’s already experienced at using the 1-20 grid of numbered boxes, he will be able to recognize the row of 6-10 as being 5 boxes. Then he can see that there are 3 boxes for 11-13, so those two rows will use 8 of his 9 poker chips; now he can put the last chip in the largest numbered box in the top row (the 5), and he’s left with 4 as the largest number box still showing: 13-9=4

Another helpful trick is to show your student how to work up or down from 10 when the answer to a problem doesn’t come to him immediately. For example, 13-9=? Let’s see, I know that 10-9=1, and 13 is 3 more than 10, and 3+1=4, so 13-9=4! How about 17-9=? 10-9=1; 17=10+7, and 1+7=8, so 18-9=8! Did you follow that? Children can get discouraged when they don’t know or can’t remember an answer immediately. Showing them several different methods for figuring out the answer helps them to see that they are smart enough to find the answer anyway. Working toward the answer from 10 or from the nearest double is a legitimate method of solving the problem and is actually a better way to learn than just rote memorization, since it uses more creative solving methods.

Are you ready to take this up one more notch? Help your students draw a 1-100 grid (10 rows of 10 squares each, numbered 1-100) and challenge your young mathematicians to toss two beanbags onto the grid and add the resulting numbers. Add more beanbags as their skills increase, or switch to subtraction or multiplication. Use beanbags in different colors (or marked with mathematical operation symbols) for students with appropriate abilities: Color #1 means add this number, Color #2 means subtract this number, Color #3 means multiply by this number, and Color #4 means divide by this number. Use several beanbags for each mathematical operation, drawing them at random from a bucket to create an amazing running math problem. Number squares can be chosen by random tossing or through careful aim. Challenging siblings to toss the beanbags and create problems for each other to solve may result in some serious stretching of math skills! Other possibilities are to toss two beanbags to create a fraction, then simplify it as needed—and more beanbags mean more fractions, which can then be added, subtracted, multiplied, or divided, always reducing the answer to its simplest form. The hopping part of hopscotch doesn’t come into play with this method (unless your kids figure out their own creative way to use it), but the tossing and retrieving of beanbags will still give your wiggly kids plenty of action.

Now you think you’ve heard all of the possible ways to use hopscotch in learning, right? Not at all! Let’s go back to the original hopscotch pattern, but instead of numbering the squares, write in parts of speech: noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, conjunction, preposition, prepositional phrase, and interjection. Hopping through the boxes gives the student a chance to think of a correct example word to give when he stops to pick up his marker. Use more specific terms as your students’ grammar skills increase: irregular verb forms, verb tenses, plurals, reflexive pronouns, dependent clauses, and so on. I included a “sentence” space at the end, and students should make their example sentences match the level of grammar being studied.

If you have a student who is really interested in science, specifically chemistry, and if you have access to a large patch of concrete, consider helping him draw out the periodic table of elements and numbering the squares accordingly. Let him make simple flashcards for each element to fit the boxes on his diagram (cereal boxes are a great source for inexpensive flashcards; write on the back with permanent marker) and practice putting them in their proper places. Flashcards might include the atomic number, the element name and symbol, and the atomic weight. More advanced students may want to include more detailed information and use the jumbo flashcards for memory practice. Other hopscotch applications: a diagram of the solar system would provide practice at naming the planets, a simplified skeleton could be drawn for practice at naming the bones, or a map of the United States (or any geographic area) would provide practice at naming states, capital cities, or other geographic features. Coordinate planes with x- and y-axes provide a large grid for plotting specific points with poker chips. Students of advanced math can solve complex equations, plot the points from multiple solutions, and draw the curves with yarn or string.

Any of these hopscotch learning games may also be drawn with permanent markers on an old, discarded sheet or tablecloth (check local thrift stores), resulting in a reusable “game board” that can be folded up and stored between uses. Use the cloth on grass, carpeting, or other surfaces where it is less likely to slip underfoot. Beanbags aren’t required, but the “marking stone” needs to be something that won’t roll away when tossed—or blow away if used outdoors.

If the weather isn’t cooperating for outdoor activities, or if you don’t have a suitable surface for chalk, or even if your students are just not excited about going outside and jumping around where anyone in the neighborhood might see them, these activities can also be done indoors by using masking tape or sticky-notes on the floor. You can even draw the grids on a large sheet of paper and use coins or game pawns as markers.

Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Auditory Learning, Homeschool How-To's, Kinesthetic Learning, Learning Outside the Books, Learning Styles, Math, Tactile Learning, Visual Learning, Workshop Wednesday

Workshop Wednesday: Sugar Cube Math, Part 2

May 16, 2012 by CarolynM 1 Comment

This topic has been explained in a previous post, but now we can supplement that with a photo. See the complete post HERE for detailed activities to make math understandable in such a fun way that it will prompt you and your kids to call it “SWEET!”

Notice that several activities are demonstrated in the picture: multiplication (upper left), showing that 2 rows of 3 cubes each is equal to 3 rows of 2 cubes each; volume (upper right), showing 3 layers of 3 rows with 3 cubes each, or 3x3x3; and the differences between area and perimeter (bottom). The four groups of sugar cubes at the bottom each contain 12 sugar cubes, so they all have an area of 12 units. However, the varying configurations show how the perimeter changes drastically. With the far right configuration, the sides in the middle hole could be counted as part of the perimeter, too, depending on the real-life application (e.g. if you were installing a fence along the sides of a trail, and the cubes represented the trail).

BONUS TIPS:
1) I wrote right on the cookie sheet with a dry erase marker and wiped it off with a tissue (but I did wash the pan well before putting it away).
2) The sugar cube activities can also be drawn on graph paper to save as a reference or worksheet.

Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Homeschool How-To's, Learning Outside the Books, Math, Tactile Learning, Workshop Wednesday

Workshop Wednesday: Macaroni as Manipulatives

May 2, 2012 by CarolynM Leave a Comment

Have you ever found yourself wishing you could afford hundreds, or maybe even thousands of letter or number manipulatives? Head for the pasta aisle in your favorite grocery store—a bag of alphabet macaroni contains both letters and numbers! The pasta is low-cost, so if you have several children who would each enjoy their own supply, you can buy several bags. Letting each student store his macaroni in a large zipper bag will help to make clean up simple and easy.

I sorted through a bag just to see if all the letters and numbers were represented, and yes, they were. My adult-sized fingers found the task a little tricky, but a set of tweezers made it simpler. Children’s small fingers are much more suited to this assignment, and tactile learners will really love digging in. Muffin pans, egg cartons, or cookie sheets are great receptacles for sorting!

Let your students play with the uncooked macaroni at first, and see what activities they devise for themselves. If they need a little encouragement or a starting place, suggest sorting the letters, forming spelling words, making random words (like “magnetic poetry” but without the magnets), or writing sentences. If they’d like to save their work, the words can be spelled out on a line of white glue on a piece of cardstock or an index card. The glue will be invisible when dry, and the cardstock can then be cut into appropriate sizes, creating miniature word-cards (add small magnets to the backs of the cards for even more versatility; a steel cookie sheet makes a good lap desk). These cards can be arranged into sentences, poetry, or lists of rhyming words or spelling patterns, and saved in a zipper bag for another day. Be serious, get silly, have fun with nonsense words, or use the letters to form the answers to lesson worksheets, and the learning will take on a whole new dimension. Don’t stop with just phonics, spelling, and grammar, however. Use these letters to practice spelling place names for geography, complicated scientific words for science or chemistry, or important people, places, and events for history. The letters can easily be scooted apart to break words into syllables or prefixes, suffixes, and root words—a great method for word study, and it adds a memory link for better recall later.

The tiny pasta numbers can be used for sorting and matching or set up as math statements by writing operation symbols on paper, leaving blank spaces for the numbers. Select specific numbers or grab random pieces for a new twist on math problems. Younger students will enjoy the challenge of putting the numbers in order or experimenting to see how many different numbers can be formed from just a few digits. Keep the pasta dry and away from toddlers and the family dog, but rest assured that a new supply is readily available in case too many pieces get stepped on, eaten, or sucked up by the vacuum cleaner!

Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Learning Outside the Books, Learning Styles, Phonics, Spelling, Tactile Learning, Workshop Wednesday, Writing

Workshop Wednesday: Play Money

April 25, 2012 by CarolynM Leave a Comment

Time to head for the game closet and dig out some play money! This stuff is a fabulous tactile learning tool that can be used for much more than just collecting $200 for passing “GO.” Use play money to practice counting by 1’s or skip-counting (by 5’s, 10’s, 100’s, etc.)with the littles, demonstrate place value and the substitution needed for arithmetic with the middles (borrowing, carrying, trading, regrouping, swapping, bundling, or whatever you choose to call it in your lessons), practice making change, or discuss money management with the olders. You can get more creative and challenge your students to grab a handful of play money and calculate the amount, then write out the amount in both digits and words. Some of you may take up the challenge to grab several random amounts and use those for addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division problems. Here’s another challenge: let your students make up their own story problems for random amounts of play money—they’ll be getting math practice and writing practice at the same time.

If you have several games that contain play money, pull it all out and pool it together: sorting by denomination is good math practice. As seen in the picture, not all games use the same denominations, so your students can learn to adapt their math practice to the supplies that are available. I even threw in a large handful of real pennies from the coin can that serves as a doorstop here—if you have a coin can or jar, you might want to borrow some of its contents for a little more math practice. (My kids paid much closer attention to math discussions if the problems involved money or food instead of just meaningless numbers!) When the math lesson is over, let the kiddies continue sorting and counting the play money: setting up a pretend “store” is great “stealth” learning! Maybe they’d like to invent a new game that uses all this play money, plus several other random pieces from a few games. Setting up the game instructions offers writing practice, determining the rules is problem-solving practice, and playing the game will give even more practice in counting, adding, subtracting, making change, and whatever other math skills their new game includes. When the time comes, sorting all those game bits and play money back into their respective games is excellent experience for the sorting required in algebra and other higher math studies, and it gets the kids involved in putting things away, instead of leaving all the clean-up to Mom.

For more tips, see also:
Building Blocks for Success in Math
Sorting Toys Is Algebra
Gee Whiz! Quiz

Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Learning Outside the Books, Math, Tactile Learning, Workshop Wednesday, Writing

Workshop Wednesday: Sidewalk Art

April 4, 2012 by CarolynM 1 Comment

What better way to incorporate drawing lessons into a beautiful homeschooling day than with chalk on the sidewalk or driveway? We often took our favorite storybooks outside with a bucket of chalk (and maybe a folded towel for under the knees) and picked some simple illustrations to duplicate.

Our favorites included the Little Miss and Mister Men characters by Roger Hargreaves and all of the fanciful creations of Dr. Seuss. Actually, we discovered that you can turn nearly any smiley-faced character into a Seuss-ian delight by adding an outcropping of tall feathers to the top of its head, a long, long, long tail, and brightly colored fur in zig-zaggy stripes. Now that’s a great lesson in cartooning! Encourage your budding artists to make a game of adding more and more features to their creatures by calling out “Heads” or “Tails” and supplementing those traits. Give each character special talents or accessories, such as juggling ice cream cones, wearing a polka-dot necktie, or holding a dozen strings tied to gigantic balloons.

Be sure to take the time to admire each other’s masterpieces and praise their unique qualities. Give each artist a turn to tell about his or her drawing, pointing out details and describing techniques used, for informal practice at oral presentations. Most of all, have fun making silly drawings and enjoying the chalk antics.

Sometimes we made several individual drawings, and sometimes we connected multiple parts into a long scene that filled our front sidewalk for the full width of our property. One summer day when lots of neighbor kids were looking for something to break up the boredom, I drew a very basic chalk outline of an old-fashioned circus train that stretched out over several blocks of our sidewalk, assigning each block (one box car) to a different child. We discussed as a group what sort of things our train should have (planning and problem-solving skills), and the children chose what they wanted to draw (delegating skills). One drew a box car with two giraffes sticking their long necks out the top. Another drew a lion in a cage, and another chose to draw the train’s steam engine with great puffs of smoke billowing out the smokestack. Our train had a few clowns, bright colored flags and pennants, and the words “Circus Train” on the side of yet another box car. The kids spent most of the afternoon drawing and coloring with the chalk and adding special touches. When anyone finished his own section, he would go help someone else, giving them all a great feeling of teamwork. The finished sidewalk “mural” received lots of admiration and compliments from neighbors and was the object of several photographs by parents. The kids all put so much work into their circus train, that we were all very glad that we had no rain for several days afterwards! However, rain was usually seen to be a magical eraser that tended to bring new inspiration for more drawings instead of disappointment that the previous masterpieces were gone.

Obviously, a variety of chalk colors makes drawing more delightful, but don’t underestimate the value of plain white chalk. Your art students will discover shading on their own, as they go over and over a section to make the color more intense, and having a limited palette of colors will make them more creative with using patterns. Be careful to use chalk marked “sidewalk chalk,” as others may not wash off as easily. I once bought a box of beautiful colored chalk at a garage sale, only to discover that the intense colors left permanent stains on the clothing we were wearing when we used it! The knees and elbows and sleeve cuffs had deep colors ground in from kneeling and leaning on the drawings, no matter how careful we had been. One more point: chalk is soft and gets used up quickly on rough surfaces, so buy in bulk! No one wants to stop in the middle of drawing an enormous stegosaurus, just because he ran out of chalk.

Whether your creations are large or small, simple or elaborate, you can enjoy a nice day outside with chalk, learning to copy drawings from books or making your own creations. Starting with simple line drawings from a favorite storybook will help beginning artists gain confidence, since they don’t have to rely on their imaginations for inspiration. After all, a large blank sidewalk can be rather intimidating! Making your drawings LARGE increases the number of details that can be added: a small face may not have room for much more than eyes and a smile, but a big face can also hold eyelashes, freckles, glasses, or a handlebar mustache!

Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Homeschool How-To's, Kinesthetic Learning, Learning Outside the Books, Tactile Learning, Visual Learning, Workshop Wednesday

Workshop Wednesday: ABC Flashcards

March 21, 2012 by CarolynM 2 Comments

Anyone want to upcycle some of that ubiquitous cardboard packaging that passes through our homes and turn it into teaching/learning tools? You’re on! Let’s make some flashcards!!

This week’s photo actually shows three related sets of alphabet flashcards that measure 3” square. Call these approximate measurements, because no one needs to waste precious time obsessing over the precision and exactness of something we’re making for free. I collected cereal boxes, brownie mix boxes, popsicle boxes, tissue boxes, pudding cup boxes, and pretty much every flavor of thin cardboard box that was large enough to cut up into something else. Confession: I made these with a paper cutter, but only because I saved up and treated myself to one. During most of our homeschooling years, I used a ruler and scissors for projects like this, and the results were just as good.

Open the boxes flat and start measuring and cutting. Again, don’t let perfectionism sidetrack you with thoughts of non-90-degree corners or less-than-perfect sides. Your students can learn from playing with these cards even after they are rescued from an eager-to-play-fetch-with-anything puppy. When you have a decent supply of cards cut from the cardboard, grab your Sharpie marker and write on the blank sides. Here we have one set with upper case letters (upper left), a set with lower case letters (lower center), and a set with both upper and lower case letters in pairs (upper right). I have also made sets with numbers 1-100, states and capitals, and many other topics that I hope to address in future Workshop Wednesday posts. (Anticipation!)

Bonus Tips:

I favor teaching letter recognition with upper case letters first, since reversals are less likely; then introducing the lower case letters as the “little brothers” of the capitals. Kids get it, even when the big brothers and little brothers don’t look exactly alike. Learning to group the larger and smaller letters as pairs is another method for avoiding reversals.
Making multiple sets of letters will allow your students to spell out vocabulary words, play word games, or leave traces of their newly-acquired knowledge all around the house as they spell out the names of every lamp, vase, and throw pillow.
If your students have mastered letter recognition, you can make 3×5” word cards and practice turning sounded-out words into sentences.

Learning Style Activities

Visual learners will appreciate flashcards with color, so you can either use colored markers for the main information or let your visual student draw designs on the edges and corners of the cards with colored pencils or fine-point markers to jazz up the natural gray or brown of the cardboard.

Auditory learners will love to read each letter aloud, no matter what activities or games you play with the cards. Switch things up by asking them to say the sound of the letter instead of (or in addition to) its name.

Tactile learners have already grabbed your new supply of flashcards and are spreading them out on the floor or table, rearranging the letters into words. That’s how you can confirm that you have a tactile student: their hands and fingers are into everything, learning as much as they possibly can about texture, heft, and balance. Please don’t scold them for grabbing and touching—it’s how they learn best. A tactile learner who is forced to keep his hands in his lap is like a visual learner wearing a blindfold. Seriously.

Kinesthetic learners will adore playing games with these cards, especially if you spread things out. Drop the stack of upper case letters on the floor in the living room. Drop the stack of lower case letters on the kitchen table. Now shuffle the “pairs” cards and place that stack in a neutral location somewhere between the other two piles of cards. Ask your student to look at the top card and run to find the matching letter cards from each of the other locations and bring them back. (Beginning students may need to take the pairs card with them for reference.) Grouping all three cards together will prove he brought the correct ones. Your energetic student can repeat this activity until he is worn out enough to sit down for reading time or some other lesson that requires seatwork.

Combine all learning styles into challenging activities that will help your students learn from all situations and all styles of teaching. Let your imagination run free with ideas and adaptations for your own students, living quarters, and academic needs. If the weather is agreeable, take the cards outside and combine relay races with spelling or vocabulary words. Mud puddles can’t destroy your prized set of flashcards, since replacements are easily made from the next empty box. You may soon find yourself rescuing cardboard boxes from the recycling bin and calling them your “homeschool supplies” as you think of more and more uses for homemade flashcards!

Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Auditory Learning, Kinesthetic Learning, Learning Outside the Books, Learning Styles, Phonics, Preschoolers, Spelling, Tactile Learning, Visual Learning, Workshop Wednesday

Workshop Wednesday: Freebie Magnets

Workshop Wednesday: Hopscotch – A Powerful Learning Game

Workshop Wednesday: Sugar Cube Math, Part 2

Workshop Wednesday: Macaroni as Manipulatives

Workshop Wednesday: Play Money

Workshop Wednesday: Sidewalk Art

Workshop Wednesday: ABC Flashcards

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