Who Needs Candy?

I’ve been practicing my vocab recently. Thanks to a site called freerice.com, I can quiz myself on new vocabulary while watching TV. It shows you a word, ideally one you’ve never seen before, and you have to choose the right definition. The words get harder as you go and the points that you earn get translated into grains of rice that are donated to Africa. This has made me think about how oddly fun learning new words can be.

Over the summer, I started keeping a word-journal. Every time I come across a word I’ve never seen before, or something that just interests me (ever wonder why “enough” and “although” look the same and sound completely different?), I research it. I put the definition in a little book and never, ever forget the word again.

Studying Latin roots and prefixes might be a little too intense for kids just learning their ABCs, but I’ve been thinking about how exciting new words are when you are just learning them for the first time. The word-journal might be nerdy and probably a little extreme, but think about opening one of the fortune cookies with the Chinese vocab on the inside. It’s fun, right?

With Halloween coming up, kids of course will go candy-crazy, but there’s no reason why MRC kids can’t trick-or-treat for words too. Little candy bars with vocabulary words written on them can be the new fortune cookie. Trick or Treating might be forever changed with this idea, and you will have heard about it first here. When you consider the number of Halloween-related words that don’t really get used the rest of the year, it really seems like there’s a lot to work with too. How often do you use “ghoul” or “spook” November through September?

It’s just a thought. How are you going to be celebrating Halloween at your site? Have any volunteer horror stories to share?