Anytime you can mix learning and fun it’s a win! Even better when it takes little or now prep. work!
We were cleaning out the hall closet one day when the kindergartner saw my old Bananagrams
Both the kindergartner and preschooler were excited by all the little letter squares inside the zippered banana!
They hunted through the letters for a while, and then we worked on sorting all the letters into piles.
It was great work for letter recognition for the preschooler. As we sorted, the kindergartner and I talked about which letters were considered vowels.
Then the kindergartner started using some of the letters to sound out words. (I didn’t correct any of the misspellings because I really want her to start sounding the words out for herself.)
Finally, she came up with a few short sentences that we sounded out together. (I loved that she used some of her spelling words in the sentence!)
We will definitely be pulling this out again! I’m looking forward to seeing what words they both come up with in the future!
Do you have any favorite games to use when working on literacy skills?
Melanie Thomas says
Great idea. I’m going to get out some Scrabble letters for learning play with my daughter.
OneMommy says
Funny you should mention Scrabble… Just found out we have 2 sets of the game and I’m thinking the kids may get their own set of letters to play!
Sara says
We just picked up magnetic letters to keep on the fridge, but I hadn’t thought about using the Bananagrams as well! Thank you.
Paula @ Frosted Fingers says
I have some bananagrams that I intended to do the same thing with! Great minds!
OneMommy says
Yup! Maybe one day we’ll play it the real way! Can’t wait to see what words they make then!
Betsy @ BPhotoArt says
What a great idea! Thanks for sharing; I think we may have this game sitting around somewhere…and I have a toddler dying to learn to read letters!
OneMommy says
Sometimes I forget what great “tools of learning” we have just sitting in the old games!
Amanda (Moming About) says
This is awesome! Great use of an old game.
Sarah says
What a fun (and educational) activity. Bet the kids had lots of fun. I have on old Scrabble game that we could do this with.
Sarah @ Play 2 Learn with Sarah says
I love Bananagrams! I’ve used it with the kids, but also playing the game by the directions is fun too! Thanks for adding it to Kids in the Kitchen!
Renee says
we love bananagrams!! our kiddos are little (1 and 2) so they don’t play yet (obviously – haha) but they love the tiles. plus they think they’re getting to play w/ a special grownup toy. it’ll be fun to actually play banangrams with them when they’re older.
one idea for early readers is to have papers that have words with missing letters and then they would have to put the banangram tile on instead of writing the letter in. you could make the sheet have more words, or have all the words practice the same phonics sound. just a thought!