finding literacy

I am on a continual quest to invent creative ways for Sasha to practice reading. This week, I made a scavenger hunt for her. The deal was she had to read (and sound out) the clues herself, and at the end would be a prize, plus the whole thing would count as her 15 minutes of nightly reading homework.

The clues were very simple, because the decoding challenge for Sasha is the reading part; I didn't want her to have to decipher an obscure rhyme too. I just wrote them in Sharpie on index cards and then hid them around the house, with the starting clue on the table where Sasha eats her afterschool snacks.

It was enormously successful. Sasha loved it. Afterward, she used the prize (a small notebook and pen) to write her own sentences, starting with "today is good," but she said that she likes the "finding better than winning" in scavenger hunts. Good thing, because my supply of regiftable tiny notebooks is drying up!

We will definitely be repeating this activity again. Maybe every week. Depends on how quickly I run out of notecards.

Hugs,
-MP