Word Collection Jars
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Our word collection started when JJ’s teacher read aloud Donavan’s Word Jar to her class. JJ wanted to start a word collection jar at home. Of course, I was happy to oblige!
Find a Jar
We found jars and labeled them. One of these days, we may get fancier and decorate the jars but we wanted to get right to our collecting so we left that until later.
Find Words for the Word Collection
Magazines
We began with old magazines. We looked for interesting words to cut out and keep in the word jars.
Picture Books
We found many wonderful, juicy words in the picture books we read. For example, the book King Hugo’s Huge Ego gave us about twenty words for our jar! JJ wrote down these words on slips of paper and added them to her collection.
Chapter Books
We’re reading with sticky notes to jot down favorite words, too. These words can be looked up in the dictionary and added to your word collection, too. Not only that, but it will get kids thinking metacognitively and prepare them for annotating texts later on in school.
Word Play Activities
Here are ways you can play more with words…
Get silly with tongue twisters. They’re a blast!
Or learn palindromes. These are my favorite, way more than my kids. I’m weird like that.
Try playing a word game. These can be as simple as hangman or as tricky as anagrams. We love vocabulary games like Oddly Obvious and Mad Libs: The Game, too.
Finally, make up silly words by combing two words together. My favorite made-up word of my own is snoph (sneeze + cough) but it still hasn’t caught on yet. Which is weird because we NEED that word! Right?
Our Favorite Word-Loving Books
Read books that celebrate words. Books like these…
Get the big list of our favorite picture books with juicy word choices here!
Make Your Own Parts of Speech Books
Just for fun, and maybe for when you play Mad Libs, you can use your cut-out words to make your own parts of speech books.
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Love this idea! I’m always excited about presenting words and reading/writing ideas in a creative and playful manner!
We too played around with word cuttings and then collaging in today’s challenge 🙂
I ADORE this idea! Big M has flown through his sight words at school and I have been thinking of other ways to encourage new words. I just put Donavan’s word jar on hold at the library and we will be busy making these word jars as soon as it comes in. Thank you, thank you!!!
I’m so happy to hear it!
Brilliant. Love the idea of word jars! We are slowly beginning to learn our alphabet and my son will adore this when we progress to words!
Maggy
maybe letter jars? 🙂
Love this idea and I know my daughter will love it! She is fascinated with letters and sounds now and is on the verge of reading soon! Cutting out words will be a great activity for her! Thanks!
have fun!
I LOVE this idea of a word jar!!