Looking for some fun ways to play with spelling, poetry and writing in your homeschool? Make some language arts manipulatives! You can find wonderful materials all around the house, absolutely free, and pick up others at dollar stores or thrift stores for next to nothing.
Here are some of our favorites.
(Instructions follow for those with a * and you can find the others on my language arts homeschool Pinterest board)
- Bottle caps
- Pistachio shells *
- Strips of paper
- Ping pong balls *
- Shells
- Rocks
- Acorns
- Popsicle sticks (use colored ones to separate parts of speech!) *
- Paint sample strips *
- Corks
- Letter dice (from games like Boggle)
- Letter tiles (from games like Scrabble or Bananagrams)
- Wrapping paper tubes *
- Paper plates and card stock strips
- Wooden craft shapes
- Tiddlywinks
- Pumpkin seeds
- Index cards
- Wooden blocks
- Old puzzle pieces
- Clothespins
- Plastic Easter eggs *
- Magnet letters
- Plastic lids
- Dixie cups
- Dragon tears
- Large beads
- Lego Duplos and Mega Blocks
- Old game pieces
- Paper shapes
- Words cut from magazines or junk mail
- Letters cut from magazines or junk mail
- Styrofoam cups
- Ceramic tiles
- Plastic spoons
- Foam bathtub letters
- Bubble wrap *
- Connect Four game
- Paint stirrers
- Craft foam
- Base ten blocks
- Styrofoam cups
- Shower curtain rings
- Foam cubes
- Old CDs in a CD case
- Nuts and bolts
- Paper cootie catchers
- Dried lima beans
- Bread ties
- Felt
- Post-it notes
Here are some ways to use them:
Gather up a bunch of pistachio shells, smooth rocks or other natural objects and use a magic marker to write words on them. Make sure to use adjectives, nouns and verbs. For example…. I, you, we, love, wet, dogs, jumped, lick, stars…. the more words you make the more variety you can get in your poem. Drop the rocks in a bucket, shake, and grab a handful to arrange into each line. Make sure to add some funny words!
I simply recycled some wrapping paper tubes that I’d normally have thrown out and fortunately one sat comfortably inside the other…
I began by making a few notes on sound blends and diagraphs that I’d chosen as a focus for learning. Doing this will also highlight how many word options your child can make using one roll.
Blend – When two or more consonants are together and you hear each sound eg. fl, cr sm
Diagraph – Two consonants stand together but make one sound eg. sh, th, ch
Popsicle sticks and playdough ~
I thought ordering the alphabet and using letters to spell words would be fun activities as well. I decided to have one color for vowels and another for consonants. I just used a marker to color the craft sticks in the picture… Seeing the two colors in their words will help them understand the importance of vowels and see patterns in their words.
I grabbed a pack of ping pong balls I picked up from the dollar store and used a Sharpie to write a letter on each one: a, c, m, o, p and t. Then I placed the six balls in an empty egg carton to hold them in place.
I wanted my 4.5 year old to practice AT and OP words so that he could get more practice differentiating the {a} and {o} sounds so I wrote the words {cat} and {mop} on separate index cards and invited him to join me…
Write a ‘boring’ adjective (walk, cry, good, short, fun, little, fast) on the bottom of a paint strip. Have the child/children look up the word in a thesaurus (if they need too) and write more colorful adjectives above their word.
I wrote sight words that she is learning right on the individual bubbles. As she read the word, she could pop the bubble.
These are just a few of the wonderful ways to use letter and word manipulatives.
Have fun!
