Language Lessons #2

A few of the recent language related activities I remembered to photograph:

 Contraction Surgery (idea from Fun in First Grade)

I got out some of their doctor-play toys, printed off the contraction cards and surgery notes sheets, gave them a couple of boxes of cheap band-aids, and let them go. Sissy is checking on one of her patients, Mrs. Could Not.

They had to perform surgery on their patients like Mr. Have Not and Mr. Has Not. They could cut or fold the paper to eliminate the "o" from not.

 Then, they had to use tape and band-aids to put the words back together as contractions.

 Every doctor has to keep records, so they recorded the results from their surgeries.

 They got really into this for over an hour, giving their patients shots and medicine, etc.

Tornado is carefully extracting the o with tongs to be taken to the "medical waste" dump, which was their pile of trash they created.

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other activities:

We've always enjoyed Brian Cleary's parts of speech books (and he has so many other fun books!), but I came across his website, which offers lots of online activities, lesson plans, and printables. My oldest son loves mad libs, so he enjoys the Crazy Cat Tales on adjectives, nouns, and verbs.

We went through our Awesome Adjectives Unit from Teachers Pay Teachers. In this particular activity, they had to use 4 adjectives to describe themselves plus draw self-portraits. These were their word choices:

Tornado - fast, loving, strong, smart, and funny. I like that Tornado described himself as fast and strong, two words I wouldn't have picked for him. I'm glad he thinks this about himself.

Sissy - sweet, graceful (I helped her with that word because she said "likes ballet.", outdoorsy, and hungry (That one made me laugh - but it's true! She is always hungry.)

Dash - fast, strong, shy, and athletic. When I suggested "stubborn" or even "strong-willed," he would NOT write those down. He didn't want anyone to see that written about him.

While learning about adjectives, we also did this activity. I would say the names of crayons in our big crayon box (which I like buying for the kids because it makes me think of my great aunt Mert's house, the only place we ever got the big box). Without seeing the crayon, they had to guess which color the name went to, for example: periwinkle=blue, so I wrote it under "blue."

They each chose their own favorite crayon name and used it for this activity. Tornado chose "Macaroni and Cheese" and wrote "Fall leaves are macaroni and cheese."

Sissy's picture for "Orchid" above says,  "The color of orchid is shining in my eyes."

Dash wrote: The silky pine trees are forest green.

This activity (which I can no longer find the link to at Sunny Days in Second Grade) required the kids to use crayons to create their own new paint color. We first looked at paint colors and paint names on paint company websites.

Tornado named his paint, of course, Crazy Tornado. He wrote: This color reminds you of "a garden after a terrible rain storm." And: This paint is just perfect for "a boys' room because it is all the colors boys like."

Dash created DurWorm. The color reminded him of "digging in the dirt and finding worms in the nice, light dirt," and is perfect for "painting soil on a wall mural."

Linkin' up HERE!