The children played their happy, little hearts out with their yellow play dough at our yellow birthday party. But, the party is over, and the play dough has become yesterday's toy. So, I thought I could recycle it into a reading/boredom buster activity, sort of inspired by Steve Cohen's Learn-to-Read Treasure Hunts, which I used with my older children, when they were first learning to read.
I started with an inexpensive Lego set, the kind that takes the kids about 5 minutes to put together, play with, and then forget. You could probably find an even less expensive, generic version. Or, better yet, pull Legos from your children's existing stash, along with instructions printed off the Lego site, to rebuild an old, demolished, Lego plane, or car.
I made a list of clues/directions. Actually, I made two lists. One, to be cut up an placed with the Lego pieces, and another, so I'd know where to hide each set of pieces. The clues were written with simple words, for my early readers.I placed each clue, and a few of the Legos into separate, snack size, plastic bags.
Then, I wadded the bags up, as tiny as possible, and placed them into globs of play dough, using a tooth pick to number the top of each glob, so using the master list, I'd know where to hide them.
My intention was to bake the play dough globs, hardening them into "treasure stones", an idea I got from John and Danita Thomas, in one of their Kid Concoction books. Their ideas haven't always panned out so well for us, so I was worried as I placed the play dough into the oven. I wondered if, even at the lowest heat setting, the plastic bags would melt to the Legos, and ruin everything.
It was about that time I started wondering why I was ruining perfectly good play dough, anyway. After all, just because the children were bored with it right then, didn't mean they wouldn't want to play with it again tomorrow. I started thinking, maybe the "stones" didn't need to be hardened, to make the "treasure" fun to find. So, I quickly snatched them back out of the oven, and placed each "stone" into a separate Ziploc bag, and hid those.
My youngest three (ages 4-7) had an excellent time searching for, and discovering, the treasure.
They didn't even notice they were reading. Well...maybe they did notice, but they didn't care.The hunt lasted for just over a half hour, and then they played for an additional half hour with the Lego set, and the play dough, which suddenly was fun again.
It's great to be a homeschooler.
What a cool idea! I have to do this. What were clues/directions like? How did you simplify the language?
ReplyDeletePhyllis - I repeated a number of words like "look", "next", and "under", and beyond that I tried to keep the words either small, or familiar. So, the clues were like "Look under D's bed", "By the eggs", "Next to the piano" - they had to sound out piano, but it's familiar enough, they could figure it out. The book I mentioned, has small hunts, with 3 or 4 clues, that get progressively wordier, and harder to read. If I remember right it comes with stickers as a reward at the end. But, the kids LOVED finding the Legos, escpecially since the directions were in the last "stone", so they didn't know what they were going to be building until the end.
ReplyDeleteI will have to remember this for when Selena gets a bit older. We do something similar now, but it is more for complex oral instruction. I think she might still struggle with the reading instruction.
ReplyDeleteI think you're going to need to add to this post of what you did to write the clues........ Just a hint from someone who wants to know more than you said in your comment.
ReplyDeleteAnd now I have another book to find.
Oh, and you had already commented on my post yesterday, but somehow blogger had temporarily eaten your comment, so I had to hit publish again.
I did something like in a classroom and the kids had a blast! I might try it with JC now that she can read a little!
ReplyDeleteI LOVE this idea! As Baby Girl and Little Wild Man enter the world of reading, I believe this will be such a fun learning activity for them.
ReplyDelete(Also, I will be getting Jungle Girl in on the action, because she would love to write up the clues- multipurpose- LOVE IT!)
What a fun summer activity:)
ReplyDeletesandy toe
This is a great idea - Anna loves treasure hunt, but it would be fun to combine them with directional activity. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteThis is a fantastic idea to use the playdoh and lego building. I'm going to do this today!
ReplyDelete