Ideas: Making seatwork FUN!!!

[Julie in MN]

Hello everyone! I have a 5 year old son, and we will be starting the O-o-octopus lesson on Monday. My son says he likes school, but I notice (and so does he!) that he seems to get a little frustrated at times when we are doing our "workbook" work...especially since we have recently incorporated sounding out words and reading a few. It is important that we continue to do the workbook portion of school, but I need ideas on how to make him enjoy it more. The last thing I want is for him to learn to not like reading because he gets frustrated. So any ideas are welcome!!!! Thanks

Hello,
Have you explored the Kindergarten idea board?
http://board.mfwbooks.com/viewforum.php?f=10

I sometimes use the many wonderful ideas even tho I'm not teaching K :o)

Julie

[kellybell]

We are firm believers in chocolate chips (I guess you could use M&Ms but the chips are smaller so you can use more without sugaring up your children too much). I use them with very small goals: "For each word you sound out you get a chocolate chip."

Don't be afraid to model for your child how to sound out. Perhaps YOU can do the worksheet first orally and then let your child do it. Eventually, he'll end up doing it himself without your help.

Also, with the K stories (the six-panel sheets in the student sheets), I put a sticker on the sheet each time we muddle through the story. The first time I do most the reading with my dd reading the very easiest words. We finish the story and put a tiny (Walmart has some little smily faces, etc.) sticker at the top of the sheet. We'll read that same story over and over (never more than two times in a day -- so sometimes we get stuck for quite a while on a story) until my dd can read it herself. Each time we put a sticker on the story. Maybe you could do that...

Don't hesitate to break up the worksheet into tiny parts. Do a little part. Do something else. Then, another little part, etc. If you need to, physically CUT the sheet into tiny pieces or invent some sort of shield with a window in it (to cover all but the current part of the sheet) so that the entire sheet isn't visible if the size of the sheet is overwhelming.

Let us know what works for you.

[Shelly Best]

Here are some tips:

When we did MFWK I gained great miles from the Greg and Steve CD Kid's In Motion.

I would take the blue alphabet cards and play hide and seek with them in a specific area of the home. When a child (I have 3) would find the letter they got to pick lunch. Some times if we were on letter 'O' we would have all orange food. Mac & Cheese, carrots....

We also used the blue cards and played concentration by non verbal matching the letters....one child would have the capital letter, the other would have the lower case letter and they would have to find the pair, then high five one another. [By the way I pulled this concept back out this year, for memorizing the states and capitals, in case any one in 1850 should read this]....

There is so much more that can be done at this age. MFW sets the pace and you can run with ideas. I really encourage making good use of your library if possible. When we go, our main focus is books that can more life and creativity to what we already do. I have a kinesthetic learner, a hands on learner, who keeps me on my toes. To this child all the paper work becomes boring, so we get creative! LOL

[MJ in IL]

I played hide and seek with the blue letters also. When they were able, I complicated this by adding in matching with the capital letters, pictures from our letter envelope or badges. They loved this! I might hide the goat badge and they would match it to a blue card and the one of several pictures I pulled.

Another fun and simple thing I did was to use glitter glue to label (Aa/Ss) the enveope for the pictures. We spent a fair amount of time "writing" the letters in sand and salt with my older son.

For the reading end of it...I spelled A LOT of words with the alphabet puzzle pieces. I would put one together and sound it out for them, and add in "un-words" too (they loved this!--to catch Mom in an error:-) I did most of this myself until they began joining me in making the words...it was at different times with each son.

Oh, another activity I added for my younger son was stamps. After doing the worksheet with the short words on it...we stamped the words on a blank paper... He thought this was great! I got a resonable set of lower case letter stamps at Michael's with a 40% off coupon from the Sunday's paper. He got to where he would stamp a "word," cut it out and hide it. I would have to do the finding and then we would discuss whether or not it was an English word. (My kids really like hide-n-seek!)

Have fun with this! I don't think my older son really got sound blending until into 1st grade and is now reading just about anything I can put into his hands.

Hope this helps! Molly