Here is a nice, placid-looking guy. In fact, he seems quite tractable, doesn't he?
Oh, no! He looks belligerent now! Did someone upset him with a snide remark?
Maybe he's angry because his pristine house...
...is now so dilapidated!
Our vocabulary words for February are from A Wrinkle in Time. In addition to being one of my favorite books of all-time, it's a fantastic source of vocabulary words in context.
So far, we found:
tractable
belligerent
antagonistic
disillusion
deft
gambol
elliptic
placid
sagely
corporeal
raucous
serene
wryly
inadvertently
dilapidated
plaintively
tangible
abrupt
dubious
autumnal
Not a bad list, especially considering we're only on Chapter 5!
As we come across unfamiliar words (or words that the kids aren't sure about) we look them up on Dictionary.com. I don't want to interrupt the reading too much, so we just read the definition and briefly discuss it in the context of the book.
After we had a long enough list words, I made a game similar to "I Have, Who Has?" I put the words and their definitions on different index cards. One of us read a definition and the person with that word had to stand up and either act out the vocabulary word or draw an example on the white board.
It was a fun game! In fact, I would say we became quite raucous! We inadvertently awakened Gomie, who was trying to nap.
Above: Mimi's drawing of cars on an elliptic race track. We told her that it looked more like a "boiled egg race." Below: Super's drawing of serene. Relaxing in a hammock is rather placid, isn't it?
My kids are no longer dubious that vocabulary practice can be fun!
tractable
belligerent
antagonistic
disillusion
deft
gambol
elliptic
placid
sagely
corporeal
raucous
serene
wryly
inadvertently
dilapidated
plaintively
tangible
abrupt
dubious
autumnal
Not a bad list, especially considering we're only on Chapter 5!
As we come across unfamiliar words (or words that the kids aren't sure about) we look them up on Dictionary.com. I don't want to interrupt the reading too much, so we just read the definition and briefly discuss it in the context of the book.
After we had a long enough list words, I made a game similar to "I Have, Who Has?" I put the words and their definitions on different index cards. One of us read a definition and the person with that word had to stand up and either act out the vocabulary word or draw an example on the white board.
It was a fun game! In fact, I would say we became quite raucous! We inadvertently awakened Gomie, who was trying to nap.
Above: Mimi's drawing of cars on an elliptic race track. We told her that it looked more like a "boiled egg race." Below: Super's drawing of serene. Relaxing in a hammock is rather placid, isn't it?
My kids are no longer dubious that vocabulary practice can be fun!
4 comments:
We just got down with A Wrinkle, Bethany and Grace read it, it is a fun book!
What a great post! Loved the way you used those vocab words throughout, lol. That game looks fun. We tend to hang out on computers and play our educational games, but both of my boys love to draw and doodle on our white board and they both love to play charades...I need to try out your game with our next set of vocabulary words!
Again, I really enjoyed your post. Thanks for sharing! :)
Katie
Homeschooling mom, loving how much fun my boys are having (and the vocabulary they are building!) playing vocabulary games online.
Love this. I know your kids remember things so much better this way. I love all the drawings. Especially the elliptic egg race. :)
Great post, and fun idea. I can only imagine what my children will choose to illustrate when I play this with them this coming week... :)!!
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