My son and I are HUGE fans of the How to Train Your Dragon book series. Last year when the 12th and final book came out, we celebrated by putting together a HTTYD Fan Club where all the local fans could get together and bond over their shared interest in the books.
We created a lot of fun activities and games for fan club members to enjoy, and we want to share them with you. (more…)
This writing prompt is super simple to make and is an excellent way of reviewing elements of a story terms such as protagonist, antagonist, setting, conflict, character, etc.. (more…)
LittleMan was playing with our sight word Jenga blocks when I got the idea for this game.
It is essentially Jenga, but each block has a word on it related to the How to Train Your Dragon book series: names of characters, places, dragon species, etc..
Players take turns pulling a block and discussing the word on it. This gives them an opportunity to review plot points, debate ideas, and generally just gives them a conversation starter related to the books.
One of the best ways to get children excited to learn is to make learning into a game.
They can never get enough sight word practice so any way we can work sight words into a game, the better. Sight word Candyland, sight word Jenga, sight word catch- you name it, we’ve added sight words to it.
Most recently we’ve been playing sight word hangman.
I am always on the look out for fun ways the kids can practice their basic skills.
Because, lets face it, handwriting can get so dull.
So when I saw some Melissa & Doug Rainbow Scratch Art Boards
Our local homeschool group has a monthly gathering during the autumn/winter/spring months which we refer to as “gym day.” The primary purpose of these gym days are social, though we try to provide the children with many gross motor activities and a few crafts. One such craft for our most recent super hero themed gym day was to write and illustrate an All About Super Me book.
When I first hosted the ABCs of Raising Well-Rounded Geeklings in March of 2014, I felt saddened at the end of the series. I had written about 26 different topics of geeky interest but that was barely even the tip of the iceburg! I knew I wanted to continue to talk about geeky parenting and so I created the On Beyond Zombie series, a weekly linky party dedicated to all things geek-parenting related.
I love comic books. They’ve been a wonderful asset when encouraging LittleMan to read. But before he could handle the complex sentences and longer words, he had to start with the very basics. Here’s one activity that was most useful for our reluctant reader.
I don’t know a Star Wars fan who doesn’t love little Artoo, and the mass appeal probably explains why there are so many craft projects out there in R2D2’s likeness.
The story of Harry Potter has inspired a love of literacy among innumerable children. The story is so engaging that many adults are unashamed to be caught with the YA novels and even pre-readers love the audio books.
