H is for Hop

I have one child that is a fantastic independent player.  The challenge is;  I have two children.  When Eli asked me for the 19th time, "What are we going to do today?" I decided the poor kid need a little more guided help.  I don't work on letter identification enough with the kiddos, so I took this opportunity to do just that.  In addition, we've been inside A LOT.  It's cold outside.  We needed to move.  Letter identification combined with some cabin fever brought about this:

On a cube I wrote the letters h, r, j, k, s, and d.  Letters were then associated an action word.

• h:  hop
• r:  run
• j:  jumping jack
• s:  sit
• d:  dance

Since I have no drawing ability whatsoever, I searched Google for pictures of these actions.  I am not sure about copyright rules, so I won't post links to the pictures, but all I did was search "CARTOON CHILD HOPPING" and then "CARTOON CHILD RUNNING" and so on.  There were some great images.  Then, the pictures were copied and pasted into a Word document with the action word printed next to it.  We grabbed our letter cube and print-outs and were ready.

Roll the cube, match the letter, and do the action.

I pulled the cube from my stash of math manipulatives, but this could be done so many ways.  Write the letters on popsicle sticks and draw one, put pieces of paper in a hat, etc...

J is for Jumping Jack!

We took a rare chance to HOP on the couch.

What a blast we had!!  The kids long outlasted me.  As I was collappesed on the couch praying for an "s," Eli was praying for a "k," his favorite.  We burned off some energy, I actually got a decent workout, and we have been playing, what Eli calls "our new game," a lot since it was invented.

A few changes I made after watching some play:

• I did draw a line under each letter to help Eli orient the cube.  This helped greatly in his letter recognition.
• Each word was cut apart and put in contact paper, allowing the game to see another day, even in the hands of Abby.

"Dance" was in Abby's hands before it was in my hands for the contact paper.

I am now working on thinking of an action word for each letter of the alphabet to expand our game.  Any ideas?  Eli told me this morning that he "cutted the cheese the mostest."  Maybe that can be our "c."