Thursday 21 August 2014

Ice cream Vocab

Recently, I discovered that Sonshine's vocabulary is rather limited. The other day, I was shocked to my bones when he told me he didn't know what 'capture' and 'relatives' means. *Slap head*
 
It sent me on a panic mode, to say the least.
 
So, I came up with a quick activity with him, hopefully we can do this on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. My goal is to build up his vocab quickly and in the shortest time possible.
 
The fortunate thing is he's got a fantastic memory; he is able to lock down a concept or word fairly quickly and retain it for good. That's why I came up with an activity to expose a number of words at one go because I am quite certain the words will stick deep into his head. For Sonshine, the activities/lessons cannot be too long winded. It has to go straight to the point (no introduction, no fanfare) & the lesson must be conducted clearly & accurately & speedily. So for this vocab activity, this is the best 'to the point' way I can think of...but for him I think it was alittle too long winded for him :P.
 
 
 
Anyway, I made these ice cream cut outs. On each of the cones, I wrote a word. Each cone has 3 scoops of ice cream and on each of them there is a word with similar meanings to one of the 'cone words'.
 
First, I jumbled them up and whilst trying to explain the game to Sonshine, he was already busy connecting the cones. I had to stop him and slow him down.
 
I let him joined the words he knows and for words that he didn't, I will make a sentence with that word and have him infer what it means and then join that word to the correct cone. For instance, I may say ' I ADMIRE her painting'  and he had to decide which of the 4 words closely describes 'Admire'.
 
I refused to spoon feed him with the answers and I want to make him use his God given brains! I think this helped to make the game more interesting for him too.

 
'Hey mom! Ice cream cones!'
 
After the first round, I mess up the words again. And this time, as he joined each word, he now had to make a sentence using that word to me. I do this to make sure he truly understands the meaning of the word and knows how to use them.
 
I hope to do this as often as possible!
 
 

2 comments:

  1. This is a cute idea! My kids love ice cream; I'm sure they will appreciate an ice cream activity!

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  2. Thanks for sharing this a great idea. I did it with my kids at: http://www.mumscalling.com/2014/08/building-vocabulary.html
    Did a link up with you.

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