Creative Learning Ideas
Enjoy some of our suggestions for creative activities to boost enthusiasm for learning.
Finding creative and playful ways to support learning is the very best way to engage and inspire. If children are interested in what they are doing they are more likely to feel motivated to continue.
Our products have been designed to give families and schools multiple opportunities for creative learning. We love to see our customers' creative ways to use our products and we have popped a few of our own suggested uses here. You can find lots more on our Instagram page and remember there are lots of ways to support the development of reading and writing that do not always look like reading and writing!
Enchanting Learning Cards for Pre-Readers
Colour Hunt: Lay out some cards and play Colour Eye Spy asking your child to find certain colours within the illustrations. You can make this into a game by rolling a dice to choose a colour ( 6=yellow) and they keep all the cards that contain that colour. - Brilliant for colour recognition!
Pick a Card: Have a selection of cards hidden in a bag and ask your child to pick one at random without you seeing. Ask them questions about their card illustration with them answering yes or no until you guess the card. When they have heard you ask lots of questions, switch roles!- Great for developing verbal skills!
Same and different: Split the card into two stacks and take it in turns to picks a card. You then have to say 1 thing that is same on the card and one thing that is different. - Awesome for observational skills and speech development.
Texture letter formation: Choose a texture tray such as sand, paint, shaving foam or gloop and explore the shape of central sound on the back of the card and making the shape in the variouse textures while saying the sound. - This is kind of hands on experience will help your child to make links from letters to sounds.
Enchanting Learning Cards for Phonics
Pick and Hunt: Place cards in a bag or box where they can't be seen and ask your child to pick a card at random, say the central sound on the card and then find as many items around the room/house/garden as they can in a set time frame - Great for working on linking letter sounds to words and objects.
SATPIN: Pick the first 6 cards in Set 1 ( s,a,t,p,i and n) cut up lots of small (2cm squared) pieces of paper with those letters written on. Using the letter sounds, ( not names) challenge your child to build as many 3 letter words as they can. If this is a bit tricky, write a list of words from the cards ( blue lists) for them to copy and build from - Good for word building from their first few known sounds ( phonics).
Magazine Snipping: Using child-appropriate scissors and an old magazine, ask your child to pick 4 cards (noticing the central sound) and then cut out pictures of items beginning with that sound. You could then use the pictures to decorate a giant version of the letter sound. - Brilliant for learning new sounds and thinking about them at the beginning of words!
Nonsense Aliens: Divide an A4 piece of plain paper into a grid. Using the green nonsense word lists on the cards, write one word at the bottom of each grid space and challenge your child to get creative and draw their own alien to match the crazy word. - Perfect for introducing your child to non-word reading ( using their phonics) which is an important skill to learn.
Enchanting Learning Cards for new readers and writers
Wiggles and Stars: Use the word lists (both green and blue) on any of the cards and write a random mix of real and nonsense words on a big piece of paper. Chat about the stars and wiggles under the sounds which show whether they are 1,2, 3 or 4 letter sounds ( there are examples on every card) and ask your child to put the stars and wiggles under each of the sounds in all of the words. Then ask them to circle the real and nonsense words in two different colours. - A fun way to remember the letter combinations for reading and spelling.
Funny Story: Have a stack of cards and a dice. Roll the dice twice and add them together to generate a number. Count through the stack and read the red section story starter on that card. Write or say a follow-up sentence to continue the story but then stop and re-roll the dice to generate a new story starter. Add it to your first two sentences and create another follow-up sentence. Keep repeating until your story becomes totally crazy! - This is a fun (and quite funny!) way to develop creative thinking by breaking the rules of sense.
Snakey Colours: Draw the outline of a snake on an A3 piece of paper and gather some paints for colour mixing! Section the snake off and ask your child to mix a new yellow or green for each section using their paints. When you have a dry snake, ask your child to describe each colour and create a name for it. They may say that one green reminds them of vegetables so that green could become 'cucumber green'. - A lovely way to encourage description in speech and in writing.
Enchanting Learning Cards for independent readers and writers
Fact File: Using the 'S' card and the yellow section, find out as many facts as you can about Singapore and create a fact file. Most of the Enchanting Learning Cards in Set 1 have place names on them so this lovely geography-based writing activity can be repeated and of course, illustrations need to be included! - An engaging way to practise writing skills.
Alliteration Alert: Explore the alliteration rhymes in the yellow section on each of the cards in Set 1 and create 10 of your own for each sound. - A great way to learn about alliteration!
Close-up description: Cut a piece of paper to roughly the same size as a card with a 2cm square cut out of the middle. Lay the paper over the card illustrations and describe what you see in detail using as many adjectives as possible, then replace it with the next card in the pile and continue. - A good challenge to improve descriptive writing for children working on improving their writing content.
Start a Story: Pick a selection of cards that you think could work well together for a story and choose your favourite story starter in the red section. Using your chosen cards as inspiration for characters and objects, start to build a story. Do this verbally at first and then start writing. - Good quality talk helps to improve writing, 'saying it before writing it' can really help when you're not sure what to write next.
Our age ranges are a rough guide as children are wonderfully individual and learn at different paces. Please use your judgment and work at a suitable level for your child.