Edu-Tainment

May 16th, 2008 tthomas Posted in Educating Our Kids |

I have a daughter who is 4 years old, going on 5, and my wife and I are teaching her how to read.

So far, thanks to her Pre-K school and our commitment to this “labor of love”, she has mastered about 50-75 words that she has memorized. However, I’m feeling like she needs to know more…More…MORE! It’s the competitive dad coming out of me. I’m not over-bearing though. I understand she will expand her vocabulary as we continue to work with her and expose her to new words.

As part of my quest to make my child a better reader (or word memorizer, I’m not sure which one yet), I’ve taken 5 of her favorite bedtime books, made a list of words found in them - broken down by the number of letters each word has:

· one/two letter words,
· three letter words,
· four letter words,
· five letter words and
· six or more letter words

And I’ve put them on index cards. I then play a little game with her where I show her the index card and she has to tell me what the word is. It’s a simple game, like flash cards, but she actually likes it. She doesn’t even realizes she’s learning while playing this simple game.

Of course, while she has fun with it, and we play for treats or to read an extra bedtime book at night to keep it interesting, I am afraid that she’s going to get bored of this game before we get through all the index cards.

Any suggestion on how I can continue to work the Edu-Tainment angle with my daughter before she gets bored?

Does anyone out there have some other ideas for simple, educational games we can play together?

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Thanks!
Terence
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