Who Am I? A National Geographic Kids Book Activity

Each month my daughter brings home the Scholastic book order forms.  I love how she sits down and circles the books that she wants.  One of the books she circles every time are these National Geographic Kids books.  My daughter is in kindergarten and the books are perfect because they are in line for pre-readers.  This series of books are great for kids as they explore a child's interest and motivate their minds to want to read.  National Geographic for Kids is considered informational reading, which is critical to success as the child progresses through school.  This series of informational books also helps a child learn about the world, while helping them with reading comprehension.  There was also another book I included not in the National Geographic Kids series, which goes to show that you can do this activity with any of your childs favorite book(s)

This Who Am I activity was an extension to these books to help with comprehension skills.

I simply copied the covers of each of the books we ordered, laminated them, cut out and attached popsicle sticks to them.

Next, I made up a list of questions.  Things like: "which animal hibernates in the winter."  OR "which animal is an amphibian."  I made sure to ask questions about each of the animals in the series we have.

It really made my daughter think about the animals we read in each book, working on her comprehension skills.

We also tied a craft into this activity by using the frog book and made our very own frog craft.

What you'll need to make this paper plate frog:

Paper plate

Green Construction paper

White Construction paper

Green paint

Paint brush

Tape

Scissors

Black crayon or marker

Hands

Pencil

Yarn

Start off by painting your plate green.
While your paper plate is drying help your child trace their hands.  Once the plate is completely dry, use some tape and attach your child's cut out hands to the bottom of the plate.  This will be the frog's feet.
Next, cut out 2 circles from the white construction paper to serve as the frog's eyes and draw black dots in the center of each circle.  Attach to the top of the paper plate.
Take your black marker or black crayon and draw a smiley face.
Finally, take your yarn, attach to the back of the paper plate and hang up.

If you are looking for an educational book series for your pre-reader this National Geographic series is highly recommended.  

Note: The thoughts in this post are strictly my own

Sight Word Game

My daughters kindergarten class is in full blown sight word learning mode!  Each week the students learn a new sight word and my daughter comes home with worksheets that I keep so that we can practice at home.  I decided to use these words and make up a game to make learning/memorizing these new words more fun.

Before Easter I picked up these paper Easter eggs from the dollar section at Target.  I then wrote the sight words on a piece of paper, laminated them and cut them out.  I also added a GO card and a STOP card just to make the game a bit more interesting. The laminating part is optional. 

The rules of the game are simple.  All the sight words are put into a pile and each player draws one of the cards.  If the player can read the sight word they take an egg.  If a STOP card gets drawn, the player loses a turn and can't go again until they draw a GO card.  If the GO card is drawn first, the player holds onto the card and can use it if they draw a STOP card. The player with the most eggs at the end of the game, wins.

I used the eggs because it was around the Easter season but anything can be used.  Other ideas could be matchbox cars, pom-pom's, candies, anything that will catch the attention of your child.

Trying to read one of the sight word cards

Yay......she read the word!!

Their are so many fun ways to learn/memorize sight words.  For more ideas, check out my Sight Words Pinterest board.