Lace-Up & Learn

A simple fun way to lace letters! 

Item 1: Shoelace 

Item 2: Pen

Item 3: Screwdriver 

Item 4: Shoebox 

Step 1: Poke wholes in the shoebox. 

Step 2: Take apart the pen. 

Step 3: Thread your shoelace through your pen. 
TIP: Use the “ink-filled-tube” to help you string the shoelace through your pen.

Step 4: Start writing letters & vowels! 
TIP: Use the back of “ink-filled-tube” to help you poke the lace through the holes.

BE CREATIVE & HAVE FUN!
Have your students write letters, and then put vowels under them.
Later, they can write words. Do it in different languages as well.

"Get real!" Kids say stuff like that, and they are right. Things really should be "Real." The same goes for teaching kids to read: it needs to be real! Yet reading is such an abstract concept. Think about it. You need to memorize a bunch of random sounds and put them all together to make words. So the question is HOW DO I MAKE IT REAL? The answer is: Make it hands on. Here is one of my favorites. Go out and get some Giant Pipe Cleaners, give them to your child and ask them to create sounds for you. Then have them put the sounds that they created into words. Now have them read back to you the words they created. Important point: Don't ever correct your child if they create a word that doesn't exist! The point of this exercise is to practice reading, NOT vocabulary. Guess what, you just made reading real! 

Welcome to the "Hands-On Reading" Blog

Happy labor day,

I have been a teacher a very long time ... I don’t want to reveal my age :-) But to be honest, my true passion is creating things. So this is where my passion and my teaching come together. I am all about "Hands-On!" These days they would label me a "Tactile Learner," or "Kinesthetic Learner." I love it when the process of learning and teaching is as natural as possible.

I live in Los Angeles, and this morning at around 3:30am we had a 3.3 earthquake. I know it doesn’t sound very big...but the epicenter was 3 minutes from my house. I twisted and turned in my bed for some time, until I finally decided to get out of bed, and surf the web. At around 6:30am I had an itch to create. So here it is: I am creating a blog! My goal for this blog is to share with others how fun learning can be, and how easily you can implement these ideas for your children or students. All you need to do is allow them to "create" what they are trying to grasp and learn -- and bang! Once they create something, they own it! It is precisely the things we own that we appreciate most, cherish, remember, and use in the future.

My passion for the past few years is teaching Hebrew Reading (my husband and I just published our 3 reading programs - check out our site www.capitlearning.com). So my posts will be different Hands-On Reading ideas, but please be creative. You can adapt these ideas for any language or topic. Enjoy! And share your ideas as well.

OK, enough about me. In my next post I will share my first idea.