(Note to editor: don’t even bother spell-checking this one!)
Oh what fun the name game can be with a preschooler still learning words, sounds, rhythms and rhymes. This is, quite possibly, my oldest girl’s favorite pastime right now. She is mildly obsessed with taking every single family member or schoolmate’s name, animal, food item and proper noun she has stored away in her brain and running it through the semi-famous and ever-enduring Name Game!
The Name Game is simple and fun to play. Start with smaller, game-friendly words and names like Mickey, Billy, etc. Soon your kids will get the hang of it on their own and be trying words with more and more syllables that you didn’t even think could work like ‘reflection’ (try that one!) and even multi-word phrases. The name game exercise is a great way to expand vocabulary and to discover new rhyming words. The game may also teach your kids to be more observant – that is where the word reflection came from in our case. One afternoon in the car we ran out of names and words. Our gal was glancing all around looking for things essentially, but words really. It was then that she noticed some light reflected from the bright sun through the window and decided to give that rather tough word a try. She did it and the results were hilarious!
As your little ones gain confidence and push the envelope with words and phrases their self-esteem will go through the roof. They will try harder and harder words and attempt to speed up the game, seeing just how fast they can say “Table, table bo-bable, banana fanna fo-fable, me my mo-mable, TABLE!”
Don’t get too worried or upset when they try a word like ‘truck’. You will hear a curse word then, in the banana-fanna section, just try to remember the innocent nature of their little minds and of this activity – it is all in good fun!
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