Word Play

Since the predicted neverending rain will spoil my plan to teach the kids about sunblock – stay tuned for next week assuming we finally get sun – I stayed up thinking about what else I should teach the kids this week.  The biggest thing that’s going on in our house right now is that my sweet little Abigail is now well into her terrible twos and gets very frustrated when she cannot express herself.  Abigail has developed a hilarious behavior along those lines.  If she doesn’t know the word for something, rather than restructure her sentence, she puts the word “tompomp” in for whatever word she lacks.  Tompomp can be any part of any sentence.  Although that satisfies her need to complete her sentence as intended, it does not satisfy her need to have others understand that sentence and leads to a high level of frustration for poor Abby.  So we’re going to work on building our vocabulary this week.

I chose 3 games to play throughout the week to this end.

1.     Cranium Cadoo

2.     Pictionary

3.     Another word (which I made up)

1.     Cranium Cadoo

I love board games.  In fact I collect them.  So I’ve had Cranium Conga and Cranium Cadoo for Kids forever, waiting for my kids to get old enough.  Briana and I play Cadoo on occasion while Abby is sleeping.  So I adjust the rules a little bit for Abby’s inclusion.  In our version we only play with the solo cards (not the combo cards) and only 3 types of cards within the solo cards.

 -The Double Meanie – the double meanie cards have 2 meanings written on the card, which I read, and the girls have to guess the 1 word that fits those meanings.  Abby actually beats Briana on one occasion – “Think of a word that means both things:  Things that you can pour juice into and things that can help you see more clearly” – Glasses!  I’m mostly surprised by their concentration and attention span to play this game – now I know that they have it in them to do so when I tell them to sit quietly while Mommy talks to a friend or finishes the dishes.  Busted.

The winner of each round gets the “Cranium dancer” from Cranium Conga and gets to get on stage (the kitchen) and dance while everyone else sits and watches from the playroom.  It’s a victory dance.

 -The Fast Find- These cards say you have to get up and find 2 objects before the timer runs out.  We make it into a race for who can find the objects first.  The cards are like riddles, for example, “Go get these two things: Something wet and something dry” most of which are opposites, but some of which you can combine to save time like “something yellow and something that makes noise”.  The kids both seem to love running around finding the objects and they both make sure they find their objects even if they’ve already lost that round.  The winner gets a victory dance.

 -Others depending- Some of the other cards are trivia or creating a word out of multiple images.  I look at it and sometimes I let the girls try it.  The victory dance never seems to get old for the girls although the “Cranium dancer” is technically a timer with a little beat instead of ticking.  I’m going to have that beat stuck in my head for days.  Da da dum dum da da.

Cranium fun ended when Abby declared, “I don’t like cards anymore!” and threw some.  If you know me, I’m neurotic about keeping my games nice and most of them are still in the original packaging (I cut small holes in the bags to get dice or cards or whatever out so I can put them back in and keep them nice), so destruction of the games signaled time for me to put my games away.

2.     Pictionary

I thought that Pictionary would also be a good way to build not only vocabulary, but also critical thinking and remembering skills.  In our version, the winner from the previous round picks the card.  I pick one of the words off of the card and we all draw it. 

Abby's saying "cheeese".  She's a little too used to the camera now.

Whoever best describes their drawing (ie uses the most detail) wins.  For example, when we drew dogs, Briana’s scribbles were described as having big ears, a big belly, 4 legs, a furry bed to lay on, and a tail.  Abby described her dog as saying woof, having a tail and being so soft.  Briana won that round.  As you can see in the pictures of the dogs below (Briana’s is pink), it was necessary to have the description part of the game. J

Abby won for boots because she actually drew details on her boots including the spots on the boots and she said hers were rainboots so she added lots of rain and she also made 2 boots.

Abby was really getting into the vocabulary building because when I told her to “pick up the…those…and put them in the box” when referring to the map pencils we were using, Abby corrected me and said “I pick up the pencils Mommy.  Pencils.”

3.     Home Spun Game

I also created my own game to play throughout the week. 

-Another word – In ‘another word’ I would point to an object and one of the kids would have to name as many other words for that object as they could think of.  For example I pointed to the Goldfish cracker box and Abby said “box” so I said, “what’s another word for it”, and she said, “container” (wow!  I think that’s a big word for a 2 year old!  Surprised me!), and then when asked for another word she said, “treat in it”.  Then she got sidetracked into trying to get the treat.  So then it would be Briana’s turn to get an object or action, and so forth.  This game is not competitive and I encourage the girls to help out their sister if she can’t think of any more synonyms.  We play sporadically all week.  (Isn’t “sporadically” the big word for the day that Cher and Tai had in Clueless?...and more to the point, why do I remember that?)  For example, we were stretching and Bree said we were doing the “side lift”, I asked for another word and she said “leg up”, then “leg lift” and then “stretching” and then “leg upping”.  Since leg upping is not a word, we were finished on that action.

Good, didactic fun on what’s been an off again on again rainy week here…and who doesn’t love word play!

<3 Pedigreed Housewife