Our lives are like weavings, with long strands and smallish bits of different colors, types and textures of yarns woven in. Our prayer is that the finished weaving will reflect the joy and beauty of our creator, who weaves alongside us day by day.
Using dollar store flashcards is an easy way to make a set of matching cards. You need to have two sets of flashcards. At left in the picture below is the flashcard set I used, along with a set of blank jumbo playing cards, on the right. Because these flashcards have occupations on both sides, I needed to glue them onto the blank cards (for matching cards, there needs to be nothing on one side or the same design on all the cards on one side).
Because I wanted to make Spanish practice cards (for occupations), I cut off the words at the bottom that named the job and told about it.
Then the pictures were glued onto the blank cards.
I always like to laminate matching cards, because we use them a lot, and when the backs get dirty, it's harder to use them to play matching card games (!); so I had these cards laminated, and then cut them apart, keeping the rounded corner appearance.
We have made several different sets of Spanish vocabulary card games, from different flashcard sets-- it usually involves gluing onto blank cards (because it is rare to find flashcards that only have pictures on one side); this takes time to do, but the finished result is very nice, and when laminated they will last a LONG time!
This is the spinner from the game James and I were playing recently. It uses a game board that looks like this:
It's basically a trail game . . . you start at one end and follow along to the other end. If you land on a pink dot, you jump ahead to the next pink dot-- except for the very last pink dot; if you land there you have to jump backwards to the previous pink dot.
The spinner in this game assigns a number for each of the 8 parts of speech. So whatever you land on is the part of speech you must use on your turn AND the number of spaces to hop along with.
It doesn't have any fancy name; we call it the "parts of speech sentence board game." It's easy to play, and can also be a lot of fun. Last time we played it the sentences turned into an ongoing story . . . it was suspenseful and interesting. But we don't usually play it that way. The only requirement on your turn is that you make a sentence that uses whatever the part of speech is that the spinner lands on. Then you can go the number of hops indicated, along the game path.
This game is really easy to make-- I found the clear plastic spinners at a school supply store-- the pink background with words and markings is just taped onto the spinner with small pieces of clear tape on two opposite sides. The game board (14" x 22") is a piece of poster board with hand-cut paper circles glued on. We use game pieces from a Parcheesi game.
It's great for a review of the parts of speech-- if kids don't know them all while playing, that's OK, too--you can give some examples if they don't know what kind of words to use for a certain part of speech.
Do you like to make games? Do you know of any others (homemade or not) that have helped in learning/practicing the parts of speech?
I learned about this on a homeschool forum. This site is like a treasure trove for those who are looking for interesting ways to study science and history. Especially science; Ellen has written several science courses for children, available for sale on her site. We have not used any of these yet, as we already have chemistry course materials for this year, but have really enjoyed using the free board and card games she has-- these are PDF downloads; it's easy to print them out and make the games.
James and I have played "The Periodic Table Game" several times-- this game board is printed onto 4 pieces of card stock, and forms the entire Periodic Table. To play the game you start on the element with atomic number 1, and go in numeric order across the elements, rolling a die to make moves. At each stop, you acquire a certain number of pennies-- depending on the element, you may gain pennies or have to give some back. Also, certain elements get bonus pennies or an extra roll if you identify them as being named after a person or place, or having certain characteristics.
"Quick Six" is a card game-- these cards are very interesting to read; there is a card for each element, and they have information about how the elements are used, with some simple artwork. You read through a list of "clues," and see if any of the five cards you have been dealt match with each given clue. You set aside the card, if it does. The goal is to be the first to have six cards in a set aside pile. A new card is drawn each time a match is made. Chemistry info is both learned and reviewed by doing this game, and we have enjoyed playing it.
There are some other chemistry games, too-- we haven't tried them all yet.
The games are all free downloads; we've found them well worth the effort to print out and prepare (very minimal work is needed, but cutting out cards can take a little while).
Our newest product is a set of farm animal matching cards. This is an e-book, and the animal card pages need to be printed out (twice, so you can play a matching game) on cardstock. It's easy to put the file on a jump drive and take it to a quick-print, if your computer doesn't do color.
These cards are very simple to make. After printing the pages, just cut them apart, following the gray guide lines. If you'd like them to be more durable, they can be laminated (usually this is available at a quick-print, too).
We use the cards with our middle grade kids (11 and 13) for Spanish practice; by the way, the words for all the animals' names and sounds are given on a couple pages of this e-book, for four different languages (English, Spanish, French, German).
They could also be used by younger children; memory match is a game for all ages.
