In order to help parents reinforce ideas learned in school and in tutoring, Academics Plus, Inc. offers a Lesson Series on our blog that demonstrates basic concepts using items you can find around the house.
Vocabulary Poster
Trying to learn vocabulary words can sometimes be tedious and difficult for students of all ages, so much so that students may not even take the time to learn new words unless they run across them reading or watching a television program. If you’re interested in getting younger children to learn new vocabulary words without having to sit them down with a dictionary, this arts and crafts project may be just the thing for you!
This craft project allows your student to create a fun poster that can be displayed in their room, all while learning some new words in the process!
What You’ll Need:
- Construction Paper
- Magazines/Newspapers (Educational ones are great, and old picture books can also work!)
- An old/used dictionary (For cutting up!)
- A dictionary (For use!)
- Scissors
- Glue
- Crayons/Markers/Colored Pencils
- A bucket/container
- Poster board or Cardboard (A small sheet for each child. This makes the base of the poster).
Step 1: Depending on the age and attentiveness level of your child, you can do this project in two ways:
1. For older students- ask students to cut out pictures of random objects from the magazines or newspapers. If the magazines are educational, this makes for an easy task! Ask them to look for objects they don’t know the name of. Then, once they’ve collected objects, you can ask them to look up the word in the dictionary and cut it out. Make sure to collect all of the dictionary definitions and put them into a bucket after they’ve been cut out.
2. For very young students- cut out pictures and their definitions ahead of time. Put the pictures in a bag that students can draw from and hide the words in a bucket. Have the students draw from the bag with their eyes closed and, as a group, identify the object and read the definition. Once all of the pictures have been drawn, have students trade amongst themselves to find the pictures they want.
Step 2: Once they have cut out the shapes, have them paste the shapes onto their own poster board or cardboard sheet in any way they want. Have them decorate the poster with crayons, markers and colored pencils. Make sure you remind them that they will be pasting the words they’ve found over the picture, so they can save a space for it as they’re decorating!
Step 3: Pour the dictionary words out onto a flat surface and have the students find the words that match their objects (for very young children, draw the words one by one, or have the children draw them, and ask who has the object on their poster that matches the word). If the children need help looking up a word to make sure it matches with their object, have them/help them look it up in the dictionary.
Step 4: When they are done, help the children hang up their new vocabulary posters in their rooms or on the wall!
We hope you enjoyed this lesson series on combining vocabulary and arts and crafts. Try it yourself and send us pictures of your vocabulary posters! We may just share them with our followers on Facebook and Twitter!
Reader Question – Do you remember the most exciting art project you had at school? What did you make? Do you still have it? Let us know here or respond to us on our Facebook page or on Twitter (@aplusdrb)!