Kickin' It Old School

Hadley's been quite interested lately in trying to figure out how to sound out and make words.  She likes helping me write grocery lists, and when we read stories together, she tries to find the words she knows like "yes," "stop," or "Euoplocephalus."  I'm just kidding on that last one.  Sort of.

Anyway, she and I were hanging out one afternoon as we often do, and she wanted to play a game.  I decided it was time to teach her how to make a fortune teller, also known as a "cootie catcher" for reasons I do not know.  We didn't talk about cooties growing up.  We were all about "MASH" and these fortune teller thingys.

It wasn't until my adult years I heard other peope calling them "cootie catchers."  Cootie catchers?  Seriously?  What good is that?  How are you going to figure out what kind of car you'll drive or who you're going to marry with a cootie catcher?  Who cares about cooties?  I want to drive a rabbit convertible.

But this is not a post about my issues with material possessions.  This is a post about teaching letters and words to Hadley.

Ehem.

So I creased the paper just like my mom taught me, and showed Hadley how it moves once it's all folded.  Hadley, being the ever practical child asks, "What do you do now?" So instead of teaching her about fortunes or cooties, I came up with a little game that I believe was a stroke of genius on my part.  Read carefully because you're totally going to want to try this at home.

We wrote numbers and letters on all the appropriate folds of our creation.  Then, after moving it the appropriate number of times (called by the number on the fold), we looked to see what letter popped up.

Then we wrote that letter down and after we had several letters, we tried to make words.

It's a great little game to do with kids who are learning how to read and write words.  I had so much fun I'm thinking about bringing it to the next party we go to.

Well, I guess I need to be invited to a party first.

There's the rub.