Any of you moms sneak veggies into your recipes? I have been looking for ways to sneak in some educational activities into our boys summer fun. Slingshot Word Challenge was what I came up with. Our boys love it!
For my first grader, I went online and hunted down a word list for his grade level and I wrote those on index cards. For my preschooler I placed each letter of the alphabet on cards.
What boy could resist a game that involves a slingshot?
Then I placed the words in a ziploc bag and I hung them up on a string between two poles. The boys got their slingshots and ammo out and were ready to shoot whatever crossed their paths.
Word Challenge for 1st grade on up:
- Identifying words: Call out a word that is up on the line and have him shoot at it.
- Fill in the blank: Make a sentence up and have them fill in the blank with the correct word by shooting at it.
- Noun or Adjective: Have them shoot the word that is the noun or adjective.
- Sentence Building: Ask them to shoot the word or words that they are going to use to make a sentence.
Word Challenge for Preschool:
- Phonics building: Call out words and have them shoot the letter it starts with. Use big words to stretch and expose them to new vocabulary for example, Amphibian, Antarctica, Colossal…. it doesn’t matter if they don’t know what it means.
- What letter comes after or before… So if the letter that is on the line G then you would say what letter comes after H and then they would shoot G.
- Identify the picture– Show them a picture of an object and have them shoot the letter it starts with.
- Identify the Vowels: Have them shoot the letters that are vowels.
The great thing about this game is that you can make it work with whatever level of comprehension they are at. Also, you can use numbers and have them doing math.
Don’t have a slingshot? The Risky Kids shares how to make your very own slingshot:
