TRAVEL ACTIVITIES

G
et road maps for older children.
Have each child use a highlighter
pen to mark your route as you
go. See if children can predict the next
city that you will pass. Are you going
North, South, East or West? What road
are you traveling on? As children get
older, make the questions more difficult
to answer.
Encourage your child to write to the
Chamber of Commerce for brochures
about places you can go to on your trip.
Make a Bingo Card for things that
might be seen on your trip. If your
children are young, use pictures that they
help you select, cut and paste from a
magazine or newspaper. Reward the
Bingo Players with comic books or
other fun reading materials for vacation.
TELEVISION
Limit TV watching to
free up time for reading.
If it is available, have your older chil-
dren watch close captioned TV with the
sound off. This also builds empathy for
those who are hearing impaired.
As your child watches commercials on
television, ask him or her to invent a
product and write slogans or an ad for it.
Using TV Guide or the TV section of
their newspaper, have your children
select their shows for the day. Then
have them give you a persuasive
speech as to why they should be per-
mitted to watch that show.
BOOKS
L
ook for garage sales in your local
newspaper. Find sales near your
home that may have books. Plan a
route, using a map of your area, usually
in the phone book. Give each child a
dollar. Let them buy their own book!
Swap books with family and friends
so that your children will have more
books to read.
Ask friends, neighbors, and teachers
to share the titles of their favorite
books.
Get library cards for your children
and let them choose books to check
out.
Find your Library Summertime
Schedule - (Storytelling Time, Youth
Book Club, Puppet Show, etc.)
NEWSPAPER
ACTIVITIES
C
lip out an interesting news story
and cut the paragraphs apart. Ask
your child to read the paragraphs
and put them in order.
Ask your child to read a short editorial
printed in your local newspaper and to
underline all the facts with a green
pencil and all the opinions with an
orange pencil.
Pictures fascinate children of all ages.
Clip pictures in the newspaper. Ask your
child to tell you about the picture or list
adjectives to describe the picture.
FUN IN THE KITCHEN
Let EmEat
Shapes
Cut bread into
different shapes
rectangles, triangles,
squares, circles. Make at
least two of each shape. Ask
your youngster to choose a pair of
similar shapes, then to put jam on the
first piece, and to place the second piece
on top to make a sandwich. This is a
snack plus a game to match shapes.
Sorting and Stacking
Teach classification skills with dinner-
ware. Ask your child to match and stack
dishes of similar sizes and shapes. Also
have your child sort flatware - forks with
forks, spoons with spoons. This is like
recognizing the shapes of letters and
numbers.
Find a simple recipe that your
child will enjoy. Make a
shopping list together.
Go to the store to find
any ingredients that you
might need. Have
your child read the
recipe to you.
Enjoy the
food!!
FUN IN THE SUN
L
ie on the ground and describe the
shapes of the clouds.
Have kids paint their names with
water on a hot sidewalk, then watch the
letters disappear! To sneak in some
science, have kids guess how long it
takes for wet footprints to evaporate,
then time it. Challenge them to guess the
melting time of ice cubes.
Drop items in a pail of water to see if
they sink or float. Have children record
all guesses and results, and reward the
players with frozen treats.
Use Sidewalk Chalk to write messages
to passers-by such as Have a Nice
Day.
If you go to the beach,
children can make letters in the sand by
walking. Pretend you are writing
messages to airplanes that might pass by.
READING
Surround your child in
Reading Materials
R
ead a scary story to your child
with the lights out, using a flash-
light.
Make an alphabet
poster with your
child. Print the letters in
large type and let your
child draw pictures.
Capital letters are usually
easier for young children to
learn first.
Record your children reading a book and
replay it so that they can listen to them-
selves. Repeat this activity so that your
children can listen to themselves im-
prove.
Play reading tag by choosing a book
with many words that your child knows.
Each time you want your child to read a
word, tap him on the shoulder.
Create a Family Reading Night - pick
a theme such as, western, multi-
cultural or decades like the 60s.
Have dinner and dress-up to go with
your theme. Select
books that are
appropriate -
invite friends
and
neighbors.
WRITING
Write new
words
to a
favorite tune.
Write and act out your own
play or puppet show. Pup-
pets are fun to make from
socks or gloves with yarn
and markers. Invite the neighbor kids and
have snacks. Videotape it if you can.
Help your child make his or her own
storybook. Make funny drawings, or glue
photos of family members onto silly maga-
zine pictures. A younger child can dictate
the story; older children can write it them-
selves. Let creativity rule!
Cut out words from a newspaper or maga-
zine and make your own telegram.
Use index cards and label all of the furni-
ture in your childs room.
Have your child write letters to family
members. For younger children, you can
have them dictate, while you write. Leave
blanks for them to fill in some words that
they can manage.
FUN AT HOME
Give your children supplies for writing, such
as a chalkboard, chalk, markers, highlighters,
a marker board, paper, pencils and crayons.
Give your children books as gifts on birthdays
and on special holidays.
Challenge younger children to
find letters of the alphabet
on everyday
items like
street signs,
cereal boxes,
or newspa-
pers. By asking How many
As can you find? you also
exercise counting skills.
Look out a window and tell a
story of what you see.
Telephonitis
Give your child practice in
reading numbers left to right
by dialing a telephone. Make
a list of telephone numbers
your child can readfor
relatives, friends, the weather
bureauand have your child make a call or
two.
Write letters on cards.
Hold up the cards one at a time and have your
children say the sounds (for example, the d
sound for the letter d).
Hide an inexpensive treat that your child will
enjoy. Write out directions for finding the treat
or draw a map. Have your child find it. You
can make it into a treasure hunt by having him
or her go to several different places and get-
ting new maps or directions before they find-
ing the treasure.
MUSIC AND GAMES
Teach your children songs and poems that are
fun to sing and say (for example, songs like
Row, Row, Row Your Boat and poems like
Wee Willie Winkie or Little Miss Muffet).
Play games such as Red-Light, Green-Light,
and Simon Says that require talking, listen-
ing, following directions, and giving direc-
tions.
Give your child these tongue
twisters to learn.
Then have themwrite their own:
Six sick slick slim sycamore saplings.
A box of biscuits, a batch of mixed
biscuits.
A skunk sat on a stump and thunk
the stump stunk, but the stump thunk
the skunk stunk.
Cut a set of pictures of objects from maga-
zines that are familiar
to your child and
have names that
are easy to spell
(un, man, dog,
cat, fan, rug). Put
the pictures face
down on a table.
Have the child turn
the picture over and
spell it. If spelled cor-
rectly, the child keeps the
picture. Use the pic-
tures to make a poster
of words that your
child can read.
Make a deck of cards using index cards and
simple words such as the, said, are, dont, have,
one, two, love, you. Make two cards with each
word on it. Play Go Fish with the word
cards. As your child learns the words, add new
ones. For younger children, use the letters of
the alphabet to make the deck of cards.