rhyme bingo vs dice match-up

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After a morning with Cora at our busy monthly moms’ group meeting, I found I was really looking forward to my “quiet time” with Maddy and Owen after lunch. I knew I wanted to do some rhyming work, since Owen can really use the work on his enunciation, so the first thing we did focused on rhyming.

Rhyme Bingo: My kiddos love Bingo—in any shape or form—so they were totally psyched to play Rhyme Bingo. On small 9 x 9” boards divided by 3 x 3” squares are pictures of words that rhyme with other pictures that are on a set of cards. I drew a card from the pile, then we all checked to see if it rhymed with one of the pictures on our boards. We played ‘cover-all’, since our ‘tokens’ were pieces from a set of Foamies that I bought a few months ago. (My kids love these little things--I wish I would have invented them myself--so I try to figure out as many uses for them as I can.) Maddy and Owen loved the game, and we played a few times, but I could tell they were more interested in the penguin/ snowflake Foamies, so I switched gears. . .

Dice Match-up: I asked Maddy and Owen to put all of the penguin/ snowflake Foamies (we only used about 1/4 of the huge tub) into a pile in the middle of the table, then I grabbed a set of dice and gave one each to Maddy and Owen. I asked them to shake it and roll it on the table (this was actually very interesting--I'm horrible--but have you ever seen a 3 year old roll dice? Yikes!). Then I asked,
Okay, now each of you count the number of dots on your die and then take that number of Foamies and line them up under your die. . . Awesome! Maddy, your die has four dots, and you have four penguins in a row! Good counting. . . Owen, your die has six dots. How many snowflakes did you line up? Right--six!

After having them each use one die for a few times, we mixed it up a bit. Here's what we did: each used two dice; tried to choose all snowflakes/ penguins; made patterns with the Foamies they chose; rolled one die, lined them up, then rolled the other and took that number away, etc. It was fun.

They apparently loved this game more than Bingo today, and the practice with one-to-one correspondence is super-helpful in preparing them for reading. One-to-one counting dots on dice to Foamies can only help to prepare them for concepts of print: one-to-one word reading, letter-sound, etc. It was just a little bit of learning tucked into our first day back to the normal schedule.

A bit more info: One of the best books on word study is Words Their Way: Word Study for Phonics, Vocabulary, and Spelling Instruction 3rd edition (Merrill Publishers, 2004). They have released a newer edition, I believe, in 2007. A ton of the resources that I do have and use regularly comes from this text. A CD accompanies the text, and on it are hundreds of print-outs, games, and sorts that are organized according to spelling stages: emergent through most advanced. I highly recommend it for anyone, and the Bingo game came from this resource.