Teaching Adjectives!

A simple and fun activity from a book we follow that even 10 year old can join in.

"The Doctor's Cat"

My kids had a lot of fun thinking of some creative adjectives about the Doctor's Cat!  I gently introduced Nouns and Adjectives to my 5 year old and I am quite sure that my 10 year old will never forget that Adjectives describe a Noun.

How do you start?

Materials:

• Whiteboard and Markers (A notebook and a pen is okay) - to list the adjectives the kids could think of.
  
  For creatively sketching the Doctor's Cat:
• Drawing paper
• Coloring tools (crayons, colored pens, etc)

Directions:

1. Just do the sample activity from the book, Language and Thinking for Young Children - The Doctor's Cat.  Or, you can try out a sample of the activity on the photo above.
2. Start listing the adjectives on the board (for my 10 year old, I asked a more challenging task for him by memorizing all the adjectives that we have listed, or just let them read each list as written).  You can begin with some funny words, my kids laughed at "cranky, silly, chubby, fatty, banana-eating" (my 5 year old invented that word).  Just keep the ball rolling and guide them by asking your reluctant child what she thinks of the hair, color of the fur, etc.  Encourage creative thinking and be silly as well.
3. After coming up with a list, dictate it to them and ask them to imagine what this cat looks like.  Then, give them some paper and color to draw the cat.
4. Share your drawings to each other and let them explain their drawing.
5. Laugh to your hear't content.

Encourage them to draw the Cat based on the list of adjectives

Let them share their work!

There are so many ideas here and it is by itself a complete curriculum for pre-schoolers and you can even tailor fit it to older kids which I just did so on this activity.

Some of our school room rules: Clean as you go.

Always make a rule on your school room - Clean as you go.  Teach your child to clean up their own tables, by themselves.  For my kids, I assign one child to be a checker of the week/month  That child is responsible to check that all items are on the proper places, chairs neatly in place,  all trash in the trash bin, lights and fans are off.

A creative way to make kids write their own story

Part of our Language Arts Curriculum is story elaboration.  We have done several of this, but this story that Ice made is extra different, extraordinarily creative.

Part of the activity is to come up with a "boring" story then will let the kid think of ways to describe and/or elaborate on it.  First, I'd let him draw the scenes on his imagination notebook (drawing book), then I'll be his scribe.  Being a scribe means, I will just write down his story word per word.  I will not even suggest words or phrases but will just guide him as to what should go next after each part of the story (ex. what's next, then what happened?, which part of the house? etc).

So our story started with:

"Pat built a house. The house collapsed."

Ice laughed and said it was boring.  The reaction I expected to conjure some creative ideas from him.  He started to draw the scenes and I, the scribe wrote down my little writer's story.  Here's what he came up with.  He's only 5, by the way.  So please excuse the grammar as I did not edit it so that soon when we review his story again, he'll be the one who will improve the story himself.  Which we'll do in our future seatworks.

Pat Built a House Being Destroyed
By: Ice

One day, there's a man named Pat and he wants a new home.  He doesn't want his old home anymore because his old house looks like our neighbor's house. :D  Then, he made his new home because he's good at making houses now.

Pat built his house made of bricks.  He also got a globe on top.  He got six floors of bricks.  It looks like a brick house because it is very nice and it has triangle windows so he can see what's down there.

One day, there's a tidal wave and destroyed the house.  Pat became a little bit sad.  He built another house in the ocean so no tidal wave can hit it because he can drive it with a steering wheel.  There's an alarm on it which will turn on when there's a tidal wave coming like "THERE'S A WAVE COMING! THERE'S A WAVE COMING! NING, NING, NING, WAAH, WAHH!!!"  Then, the steering wheel that is shaped like a globe will turn the house.

The end.