1.Don't come to school empty-handed! Have a bag of tricks to help you break the ice and have some fun as you and the children work.
  1. At the grocery store, find the set of 4 picture card games: Snap, Old Maid, Donkey, and Animal Snap. Put 2 sets together to make a matching game. PLAY: shuffle the deck, and lay out in a grid on the table. Pick 2 cards, if they match (read the word! look at the picture!), you put them down in front of you and GET ANOTHER TURN! When all the cards are picked, the winner has the most sets.
  2. Play Old Maid.
  3. FInd "There was an old lady who swallowed a fly" and read and sing.
  4. Show a sequence of pictures (Kitty Meets Dog pdf file), talk about it!
  5. Bring a book you love, it can be a hard book, and read it aloud.
  6. Find a great poem and read it together.
  7. Tell me a story, I'll tell you one.
  8. Make a mini book (fold plain paper in half, vertically, then horizontally. Open and cut the vertical fold. Take the 2 sections, insert one into the other, and staple together. You now have an 8 page book. Have the child draw picture on every page. Then write the story underneath, one or 2 sentences at a time. Small worlds are great.
  9. Play Yahtzee.
  10. Send me your ideas and books and web sites and I'll post them here.