5 Language and Literacy Games to Play While Waiting for the School Bus
The school year is officially upon us! As we all settle back into the school year groove, one thing that many children and parents are doing much more of is waiting for the school bus. The few minutes of wait time provides great opportunities to play language based games with your captive audience. Below are 5 game ideas aimed to work on early language and literacy skills while keeping your kiddos (and yourself) entertained in the progressively colder weather:
1) I Spy- the classic I Spy game is great for working on first sound identification with your emerging readers. The For younger kids who are just starting to listen out for beginning sounds, offer suggestions and help them to test whether they hear the right first sound (e.g. We’re looking for something that starts with ‘b’. Car- does that start with ‘b’? No. How about ‘bus’ b-b-bus. Does that start with ‘b’? Yes!) . Make sure you are using the letter sounds and not letter names. This will help kids listen out for the initial sound in a word, which is a skill they require for reading and reading.
2) If I were a ____________. Fair warning: this game gets silly pretty fast, so check your dignity at the door! This is a turn-taking game, where one person comes up with what you’re going to be, and then you take turns coming up with actions you would perform- and acting them out! For example, if the first person says “If I were a bee”, the next person would then be responsible for coming up with an action they’d perform: “I’d flap my wings really fast”. The next person then comes up with something else a bee would do ‘I would drink pollen from flowers”, “I would sting you with my singer!”. Continue taking turns performing actions until you can no longer think of things a bee would do. At that point, choose another animal or object to be. This game is great for helping kids generate the properties and actions of objects. Acting out the actions helps provide meaningful context which makes retention of these concepts much easier for kids than if you do the talking alone!
3) Rhyming game- This is exactly what is sounds like. Take turns coming up with words that rhyme as many times as you can before someone gets stuck (e.g. “bear”, “hair”, “stare”, “share”, “stair”, “fair”, “rare”, “care”). Nonsense words can also be used, but if you’re playing that way, challenge your kids to decide whether it’s a real word or a “fake” word. Rhyming is a phonological awareness skill that’s important for early readers as they learn to break words apart into pieces.
4) Category game- This game is great for helping kids learn about how words go together. First, name a category, and then take turns coming up with items that belong to the category. For example, if your category is furniture, generate items such as “chair”, “couch”, “desk”, “table” until someone can’t come up with an item. For older kids, make the categories more specific (e.g. types of dogs).
5) I Spy by Description- This game is played in much the same way as the traditional I Spy, but instead of providing the first sound as a clue, you provide descriptive information until the other person is able to guess what you’re describing. For example, if describing a bench, provide clues such as “something made of wood”. Keep providing clues until someone can guess “something with legs”, “something you can sit on” etc. Try modelling descriptors across different categories- think about concepts such as size, shape, texture, number and function. For older kids, try the game with objects not currently visible in your environment.
