Likes video games, running

There are lots of fun literacy activities for active kids.

I was talking to a mom yesterday who said she has two sons – one of whom isn’t a good reader. He likes video games and is quite physically active.

Here are some fun suggestions:

* Write a simple sentence on a long piece of paper. Cut it up into words and place them around the room. Time your son as he runs around, finding words, and making a sentence from them. (Remind him to use clues like the period at the end of the sentence, and the capital letter at the beginning.)

* Sink Scrabble tiles into a large bowl of rice. As he finds the tiles, he makes words.

* Show him how his Nintendo DS can be used for messages.

* In the summer, toss letters into the pool. He can dive for letters and make words by the side of the pool.

* Give him 8 Scrabble tiles (for instance, E L R E T I A S). Get him to make as many words as he can in two minutes, using those letters. See if he can make more the second time around.

* Make everything a fun contest! Time him, or get him to compete against someone else or simply beat his own score.

For more active-kid literacy ideas, check out this post on kinesthetic learning.