Twister

As we already know children need a lot of activities during the day to exercise their body and mind. I read a book called I love letters! by Jean Feldman and Holly Karapetkova, and found an amazing game to practice recognition of words. The book suggested to write letters on paper plates and place six to nine on the floor in order as shown below:

R B Y

I N Q

K W J

However, I reinvented the idea to adapt it to my son's level. My son recognises the letters of the alphabet very well, and now he is learning how to read and formulate sentences. Hence I decided to use words instead of letters to practice recognition of words.

The game is quite simple to play, the child has to follow the teacher/parents directions as you instruct s/he of what to do, for instance: "put your left hand on the word rat". Put you right elbow on the word zip. Put your right leg on the word pig, and so on. Make directions increasingly complex to make it funnier. My directions were:

• Put your left hand on the word is;
• Put your right leg on the word my;
• Put your left leg on the word fan;
• Put your right hand on the word men;
• Put your left elbow on the word the;
• Put your right knee on the word zip;
• Put your right elbow on the word rat;
• Put your left knee on the word pig;
• Put you head on the word dog.

My son had a lot of fun trying to balance his body in order to reach the letters I was asking him to show me.

When we finished the game, he created two new words that he already learnt: dip and tan.

An inexpensive and fun game that develops words and sounds recognition.