Writing: Family Writing Fun

Make a 'Fridgesite'

 

Today's Snack: Have something from your fridge - maybe a handful of strawberries or raspberries - and something from your freezer - perhaps a frozen fruit bar.

 

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Supplies:

Hanging whiteboard and dry-erase marker

or small bulletin board and tacks

or other kind of display board and Scotch tape

 

Set of magnetized alphabet letters

 

 

            You know all about websites. But have you ever had a "fridgesite"?

 

Take the kitchen appliance that seems to be the communications central of most homes - the refrigerator, or "fridge."

 

Turn it into a writing center that your whole family will enjoy contributing to every day. Keep the focus on words, and have fun spotlighting them and building your children's vocabularies, reading and writing skills.

 

Start with the classic word-building tools, magnetized alphabet letters and numbers. These really work to familiarize young children with the alphabet and numbers. But they can help a lot with tough spelling words, new vocabulary words, and really short poems that family members can leave on the fridge for each other.

 

As the kids in the family grow, and once they can read, you can expand your "fridgesite" with a whiteboard or bulletin board on which you display items that can help your children with reading and writing.

 

For example, each week, you can put your child's spelling words, or just the tough ones, on there, and the whole family can review them all week.

 

Or you can write the author and title of the books your children are reading for fun, outside of class, so that the whole family supports that activity and can ask them questions about what's happening in their books.

 

It's a great idea to post your children's stories and papers from school, to foster more appreciation of the reading and writing that your young students are engaged in for hours each day.

 

You can cut out a comic strip or interesting feature story from the newspaper or a magazine for all to read and discuss.

 

Or cut out a great quote from a newspaper or magazine and post on your "fridgesite," to explain the quote in the context of history to your children, and expose them to great people who make famous quotes like that. You can even go to the Internet, find a picture of the famous person, and print it out to go with the quote.

 

Or you can have a caption contest for a funny picture that you cut out of a magazine, newspaper or catalog, and post.

 

            The possibilities are endless! Just be sure to keep the content on your "fridgesite" new, fresh and exciting, just like the most successful "sites" in cyberspace.

 

Best of all, the whole family can participate in your "fridgesite." And that's probably the most fun of all.