Improve Vocabulary with the Whole Family
It blows my mind how fast summer flies by. I always have great intentions to keep the kids’ minds active and engaged but it seems I have failed this time around. With just a few weeks until they’re back to school, I’m desperately trying to find simple ways to improve vocabulary skills, math facts, and reading comprehension. This post was sponsored by P&G as part of an Influencer Activation for Influence Central. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Improve Vocabulary – Fun for the Family
I don’t know of any quick method for gaining rapid word knowledge, but I do my best work under pressure. So, I put my thinking cap on and decided we needed something fun, easy, and definitely not time consuming. Seems impossible right? Well, we eat at least one meal together everyday. And we’re usually talking each others’ ears off between bites…
It suddenly hit me. This is the perfect time to sneak in some word challenges. But, I wanted to make it fun. I decided to write unfamiliar words for each of us to incorporate into a sentence…
Where could I write these words without spending a ton of time cutting note cards or permanently marking up our placemats?
The napkins!
We headed to Costco to stock up on Bounty Advanced paper towels. They’re strong and have half sheets perfect for mealtime at the table. Plus, they are easy to write on with permanent marker. They are thick enough with more paper per inch* so that the marker doesn’t tear through. (It’s best to put a layer between your napkin and surface though just to be sure you don’t get ink on your table.) *vs. National Bounty Original
I picked words that would be fun to talk about together and slightly challenging to figure out. I then folded each ‘napkin’ into a fun shape and put them all into a dish for everyone to pick from. You can see exactly how I did it by watching the video below.
Now, we are having conversations that spin off in all sorts of funny and educational directions. We’re also not wiping our hands on our shirts! This is all happening without having to schedule in any more time too. Everyone is happy and getting ready for back to school without even knowing it!
Bounty Advanced paper towels are also the perfect lunch box napkin and I can’t wait to write little messages for the kids and sneak in some more word fun.
All the P&G Household Needs products are constantly making my life easier. They understand that details matter.
I always use Bounty Towels. This is a great idea to write messages on the towels!
I had to look up cenotes. Now I know. When I was growing up we had a rule at the dinner table that if someone used an unfamiliar word, we had to go look it up in the dictionary (long before computers or smartphones)
This is a cute idea. The Bounty napkins/towels are great for any use in a house. This idea of using towels in funny shapes are good way to learn vocabulary.
As a teacher we always were taught that reading a lot is the best way to increase vocabulary. This is so much fun though and any kid would love it!!
Thanks so much for sharing at Thoughts of Home on Thursday. 🙂
Cute idea! And fun converstation starter for dinner time. Thanks for sharing at #HomeMattersParty hope to see you back!
Great idea! Now we can start up a better conversation at the dinning. Thanks