Thursday, February 5, 2015

Valentine Pun and Idiom Challenge



I called the children to the table today, and presented them with a brainstorming challenge.  I told them they were the marketing department for the Cheesy Cheap Toy Company.  For some strange reason sales for the company have been down.  With Valentine's Day approaching the company execs were asking for the marketing department to come up with a campaign to boost sales by attaching their toys to Valentine cards.

They had a sample of Cheesy Cheap Toy's offerings (a sack full of quarter machine toys from the grocery store), and a copy of Riveting Valentine Jokes for Kids (accessed for free through our KindleUnlimeted account) for inspiration (any Valentine pun or joke book would do).


They worked together brainstorming Valentines for their finds.  Admittedly, their ideas were not all that original...


...but for an off the cuff effort, they did pretty well...


...especially considering not all of the toys were easy to identify.


And, if nothing else, it gave us a chance to talk about puns and idiomatic phrases, while honing creative writing skills, and knocking of a few Valentines for family and friends, at the same time.

8 comments:

claireshomeeducation said...

Fun! Is Valentine a huge celebration in America? There seems to be lots of stuff in blog land at the moment. It's not that big over here apart from maybe a couple doing something romantic. Gary has a few things planned for the girls because this is the first time they have shown any interest in the whole Valentine thing. It should be a lot of fun!

An Almost Unschooling Mom said...

Claire - It has it's own Charlie Brown special...I guess that makes it officially a big deal :) Another excuse for chocolates, and cookies, and flowers, and passing fun notes to each other - plus it gives the stores something to put on their shelves - and drives the winter blahs away a little more.

MaryAnne said...

These are cute! Emma has been writing lots of inside jokes and quotes from books on the backs of the valentines she is giving her classmates.

Ticia said...

That is a fun exercise, I'm pinning this to do next year with the kids.

Anonymous said...

I think Firecracker would find this very fun :-)

Bethany said...

You are so clever!

Natalie PlanetSmarty said...

How fun! It's interesting to see our kids develop sense for language. In our family daughter is already correcting her parents' grammar :)

Anonymous said...

How fun! I am super curious to try it with mine an see what they can come up with :D