Fishy literacy game

A do-it-yourself game that helps early readers connect capital letters with their lowercase equivalents. Thank you to guest blogger Dawn Little, for this post.

Here is a fun letter match game to help your child recognize and match capital letters to lower case letters.

1. Gather your materials: One small magnet, a wooden dowel, yarn, glue, construction paper, markers, scissors, and 52 paper clips (and 26 googly eyes, if you'd like).

2. Make a fish template on a piece of construction paper. Use the template to cut out 52 fish (26 capital letters, 26 lower case letters). Give your fish smiles and either make an eye using marker or glue a googly eye on each one. Attach paper clips to the mouth of each fish, like a fish hook.

3. Make a fishing pole by tying a piece of yarn to one end of the dowel. Put glue on one side of the magnet and attach it to the hanging end of the yarn.

4. Scatter the fish on a table or the floor. Give your child the fishing pole and call out letters, calling out a capital letter first. After your child catches that fish, call out the lower case letter match. Ask her to match the lower case letter with the capital letter.

It's a good idea to use only half the alphabet at a time; for instance, A through I. Do J through K next time; you don’t want to overwhelm your child. Plus, if you only do half the alphabet, you’ve separated out the tricky b/d and p/q, which can be confusing for kids.

I adapted this game from the School of Fish Game at No Time for Flashcards.

Have fun fishing!

Dawn Little (aka Links to Literacy on Twitter) blogs at Teaching With Picture Books, providing educators with picture book lessons based on comprehension strategies and the Six Traits of Writing. She also blogs at The Literacy Toolbox, where she provides educators and parents with tips and tools to enhance the literacy lives of children. She is the founder and owner of Links to Literacy, a company dedicated to providing interactive literacy experiences for children and families.

Did you spot those cute little Dawn's-daughter's-toes in the bottom left of the photo? Cute little fisher-girl.

Alice now and then

Do cheer up, Alice dear!

This is the first Alice in Wonderland - the namesake.

It's Alice Liddell, one of three girls to whom Lewis Carroll told the original story of Alice Through the Looking Glass. They urged him to write it down, and the rest is history.

The Globe and Mail has a wonderful slide show of Alice through the ages, including an Annie Lebowitz portrait, one by the Hunter S. Thomson illustrator and this one, from the movie.

Please do encourage your child to read the book, or read it out loud to them. It's so worth it.

It's also a good idea to show them the Globe's slide show. Reading extensions like seeing the movie or getting a taste for the background of a book can really help to get kids reading.

Dry-Erase Crayons

Things that make you go "d'uh!"

This is one of those inventions that you wish you'd thought of.

Dry-erase crayons. How good is that?

No mess, no smell, no drying out. But do they work? This is the best part - they really, really do work well.

The colours are deep and rich, and they write smoothly. Kind of like a cross between crayons and lipstick. Even on paper, which I don't advise because they smudge, they are vibrant and smooth-writing.

Combine this product with the idea about using a plastic plate as a mini-whiteboard, and you've got yourself a fun literacy-building activity. That wipes right off.

The dry-erase crayons come in packs of eight, with an "E-Z Erase Mitt" (in Canada it's an E-Zed Erase Mitt, which makes no sense but still wipes off just fine) and a built-in crayon sharpener.

I bet it won't take long before you're seeing them in classrooms and boardrooms. Fun! Crayola's selling them here for $5.48 a pack. Incidentally, I just Googled "dry-erase crayons" and found out that Sargent also makes them.

Sorry if this article sounds like a commercial for Crayola. I'm not affiliated with them, I don't get money from them - heck, I didn't even get a free box of crayons, just two sample crayons (which everyone at the For the Love of Reading conference also got). I just happen to like this product. Still, the article is a bit gushy. I will try to curb my enthusiasm just a titch in future.

Bubblegum writing

Another tip from Lori Jamison, speaking at the recent Reading for the Love of It conference.

When she's trying to get young children to sound out words, she calls it "bubblegum writing."

She tells them to pretend the word they want to write--let's say, "camping"--is a piece of bubblegum.

With one hand, you s-t-r-e-t-c-h the bubble gum from your mouth out into the air.

You're stretching the word.

With the other hand, you write down each letter as you say it. Like this:

C....a....m.....p....ing

The child writes: k m p n

It's not "book writing" yet, of course, but they've learned how to manipulate a word to figure out the sounds within it. And that's a pretty great start!

A related tip - every day she teaches one new word, spelled properly. And then she says, "now, whenever we want to write that word, that's how we'll write it." She always starts with "I" because it's easy and it's about the child. So in a very short time, a child will be able to write:

"I wnt kmpn." Not bad.

Sorry about this photo. Lip gloss - not good. But it was all I could find. As with all of my blog photos, one must use one's imagination!

Wanna hear something cool? Two days ago, CBC radio picked my account of teaching literacy to a young adult, to win a small prize. The bigger prize was that Rita Celli read my article on the air. Thanks, CBC!

Early writers - adding detail

Yes, Lori Jamison's workshop was packed.

And for good reason. Here's another excellent tip she shared.

When her kindergarteners were starting to write sentences (towards the end of JK or in SK), they would write this way: "I like my cat."

And that would be it. I'm finished, teacher!

How to encourage them to add detail? To add another sentence or two?

Jamison would go around the room, reading the kids' sentences, and give each child a dot sticker on the back of their hand.

If you had a dot on the back of your hand, that meant to add another sentence. The period was the dot.

As she was handing out the stickers, she would say something like this: "I like my cat. That's very good. Do you think you could add another detail about your cat?" The child would nod. And she would put a dot on the back of the child's hand. ("Here's a detail dot.")

The child would write: "I like my cat. He is funny."

For some students, Jamison would apply two dots to the back of their hand. Two dots! Two details. Go, kid, go.

She says she has never had a child refuse a dot. In fact, children come up to her asking for more dots. That's pretty good - kids asking to write more.

As kids are given dots, it's a good idea to offer a prompt that helps them come up with the next sentence. Like "How did that make you feel?" or "What do you like about it?"

The kids' sentences weren't always "book English" - in other words, written perfectly, the way you'd see sentences in a book. Sometimes they were pictures with scribbles. And sometimes they were jumbled letters meant to represent words. Doesn't matter - it's all part of the continuum of learning to write. They're all forms of "sentences" to which the kids can add more "sentences" and greater detail. Those kids still get dots, and the dots help them progress along that continuum. And it's fun.

Why Percy Jackson is awesome

Now this is a goood book.

How do I know that Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief is a good book? Here's how:

The other day my son was home sick with an ear infection (he's fine now). Even when he's sick, he normally never stops moving around, playing sports, doing his usual stuff.

However, on this day he sat in his bed for four and a half hours reading Percy Jackson. All of it. More than 200 pages.

He didn't even stop for lunch - I had to give him a sandwich in bed.

OK, so the ear infection played a part. But I think it was mostly this book that stopped my son in his tracks and kept him reading for the whole day.

I'm reading the book now, before we all go to see the movie. I think it's appealing to certain kids because it's a very fast read and it has tons of action. Even before you find out Percy is half Greek god, there's lots of physical stuff happening.

If your child has ADHD, this book has an added bonus. Percy Jackson and the other half-blood kid protagonists in the book have all been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and/or learning disabilities. Then, of course, we find out that they're all heroes. If your child has been similarly diagnosed, this book may help to boost his self-esteem and help him see his potential. Well, not to become a Greek god (I hope) - but you know what I mean.

The book is a bit easier to read than I thought it would be. It might be good for older kids who are somewhat reluctant readers. The content is more mature (fights, battles, general mayhem) but with the exception of the Greek words and names of the gods, the vocabulary is fairly light.

I have an idea for the author, however. In the back of each book, include a pronunciation guide for the names of the Greek characters. I thought that my son was getting a bit of an education on Greek mythology--and he is--until he said some of the names aloud and I realized that he's pronouncing them in his head very differently from the way they're normally pronounced. For instance, "Chiron" as "Cheer-on" rather than "Ky-ron." Don't worry, I set 'im straight.

Until the author takes me up on my fantastic idea, here's an online pronunciation guide to Greek mythology.

Here's a link to the Percy Jackson website.

We're now gkreading.com

We have a new - and improved - web address.

Getting Kids Reading is now at www.gkreading.com.

The old address (http://gettingkidsreading.blogspot.com) will still work. And the content hasn't changed. But the address is just a bit easier to, um, read. And isn't that the point? Yes.

I'd like to thank my husband without whom, trust me, this could not have happened. Like, in a million years.