Living / 15 April, 2019 / Nanny Anita

Letter and Sight Word Maze

During the holidays I try to do a little bit of maths and English with my charges, just to help keep everything fresh in their memories. At the moment we have been working our way through a couple of workbooks, that both of them really enjoy, we normally do one or two pages per day (depending on how hard they have found it). As sitting down to do homework can be slightly repetitive, I decided to do something slightly different with our letters and sounds, something that would get them up on their feet and moving around.

In the playroom I set up a masking tape maze on the carpet, and at each junction I wrote a different letter, blended sound or sight word. To make it even more enticing I added some sweets to each thing I wrote.

The rules of the game were very simple:

• They had to try and stay on the lines
• They had to attempt each letter, sound or word they came to. It didn’t matter if they got it wrong, because they could ask for help.
• They could only get the sweet if they got the answer correct, without help; it may seem mean, but it actually encouraged them to think about their answers rather than guess or blurt out anything. My eldest charge missed a few sweets because he told me that he knew the answer and then didn’t really think it through so ended up making silly mistakes on letters he knows.

Both of them were interested in what I was making and keen to have a go, and of course it got them moving and thinking and out from behind the table. It is also one of the few activities we have done that incorporates gross motor skills with English. We even left the tape on the floor so that we could try again tomorrow, but maybe with healthier treats.

This activity may help development of:

• Gross motor skills
• Letter and Sight word recognition
• Reading

The whole maze

Deciding which way to go