Play "Roll Those Words", A Reading Activity

Help your child practice her reading and sentence-writing skills in a fun way by playing "Roll Those Words!" In this twist on a classic word dice game, re-use your old wooden building blocks or game board dice to get your child rolling her way to reading and building her own sentences.

What You Need:

• Four 1” to 1½” cube blocks or large dice
• Large blank shipping labels or name tag labels
• Writing paper
• Pencils
• Markers
• Shoe box or plastic container to store the game

Set-Up:

1. With the markers, print these articles and pronouns on six of the labels: A, The, This, and That (You will need to repeat two of the words). Place the labels onto a block, one word for each side.
2. With the marker, print these nouns on another six labels: Bear, Horse, Dog, Cat, Bird, and Lion. Place one of these labels on each side of another block.
3. On the next block, print labels and place on another block the following verbs: was, seems, feels, and looks (Repeat two of the words).
4. On the remaining block, print and place these adjectives: big, brown, happy, hungry, pretty, and yellow.
5. To store this activity for later use, place the word blocks, writing paper, and pencils into the shoe box or container. You may want to label the box with the game’s title.

What to Do:

1. Let your child write her name at the top of a piece of paper.
2. Have her pick up the four word blocks, roll them like dice, and read each word that lands face-up.
3. Encourage her to arrange the words to make a sentence that makes sense. If some of the words make sense but other words don't, she can keep the words that work and re-roll the other blocks again.
4. When she has made a sensible, complete sentence, let her write her sentence on her paper.
5. Keep rolling the blocks until she has four different sentences, writing them down as you go along. Be sure to begin all sentences with a capital letter and end it with a punctuation mark!

Note:  You can vary this activity by using the blocks to make words rather than sentences. Instead of writing words on the labels, write consonants (such as d, r, t, b, s, p) or consonant blends (br, st, fl, bl, sp, dr) on two of the blocks and write short vowel word chunks (-at, -am, -it, -ig, -ot, -un) or long vowel chunks (-ame, -ate, -ime, -ipe, -oat, -eet) on two remaining blocks. Roll the blocks and let your child make some words!