Tonight my family played one of our all-time favorite dinner time activities, the Magic Word game. This is a game that my third grade teacher, Mrs. Mc Clintock, invented when I was little. Magic Word is an easy and fun way to teach young children large vocabulary words, the bigger the better.
At the start of dinner have your daughter select a new SAT word to practice. Carefully read and explain what the word means. Be sure to use the word in a sentence a few times. Then knock on the table and say “Game on.” My kids love that part!
Proceed on to eat an ordinary dinner. (Of course, if you are anything like me your cooking isn’t ordinary. Mine varies from extraordinary to just plain awful, depending on the night!) Sometime in the middle of the dinner, slip the Magic Word into the conversation. The first kid to shoot his hand up in the air and shout “Magic Word” wins if he is able to define the word and use it in a sentence. Hopefully this doesn’t prompt any logomachy.
(This post is adapted from Teaching My Baby To Read.)
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