Animal/Word Matching

This is one of those things that I did totally on the spur of the moment (thus it’s written in crayon), but it became one of Becca’s favorite activities.  A while back, I shared a picture on my Facebook page (stop right here – if you haven’t gone and clicked “like”, I really do share some different things there than I do here – so go over to the right side of my blog there, and click “like!”  And if you have clicked like, thank you!  If you aren’t seeing my posts, go on over to my page and check it out regularly.  The more you “like” posts and make comments, the more likely it is to show up on your newsfeed!)  Anyway, I digressed.  I shared a picture on my Facebook page of Becca playing in her water table inside – I had put our ocean rice (blue and green rice mixed together from this activity) over in the table, added her Underwater Friends Sea Animals (aff link – thank you!), and then up on the top, I had put in her Dozen Small Toy Dinosaurs (aff link – thank you!) because life is always more fun with dinosaurs!  And she was loving playing with them.

So, the next day, she was back over there playing again, and I decided I’d see if she could match the ocean animals to their “name.”  I grabbed a paper and the closest writing utensil (enter the crayon), and scrawled them down.  Then, together, we hunted for the animal’s name and listened to the sounds in the words to match them up.  She did incredibly well with it.  So, I left the paper where she could get to it.

The next day, I walk over to the table where she is playing, and found that she had over half of them already on the sheet next to the correct names.  The s names were a little challenging, so we worked together to correct those.  This has been a fabulous activity, so I plan to type up the names and then laminate the sheet – and make one also for her farm and jungle animals – so that she can do more animal/word matching in the future.  What an awesome way to start working in more phonics, and word recognition!  This girl wants to read so bad she can taste it.  I even caught her yesterday during her playtime in her room (which she now calls “My reading room” – seriously) running her fingers along under the words, and “reading” – she was looking at her Bible, and though I know she wasn’t actually reading, she was pointing to the words and telling the correct story that went with that page!  Awe the joys of a video monitor. 🙂