Word Doors

I have been known to get "sucked in" to reading blogs from other home schoolers or elementary school teachers.  I am ashamed at how much time I actually spend reading them.  But, I do glean a lot of ideas from them.  One is "Word Walls."  I see them all over classroom blogs and never knew for sure what teachers did with them. 

I adapted the concept to make "Word Doors."  Each week we pick a topic and decorated the top portion of the door with it somehow.  Then I read a few books from that topic to the girls.  Whenever they hear a word they like or don't know they stop and tell me.  I write the word on a half-index card, which they decorate with a sticker and tape onto the door. 

When we are done, we read all the words together.  Then about once every other day we review all the new words (not all are new) which are on the door.  This exercise greatly enhances their listening skills, as they both want to pick the best words from the book.

They also love making the Word Doors and want to show Robby the new Word Doors as soon as he gets home.

When we did a Fancy Nancy door, the girls started out by dressing up as fancy as they could first:

We colored a title for the door and decorated it with tons of stickers.

Why wear one necklace when you can wear eight?

For the Fancy Nancy door, we used lots of pretty index card strips.  For the Curious George door, we decorated it with coloring sheets I found off the Internet.  Then we used yellow index card strips for all the words they chose, because of the Man in the Yellow Hat.

It has taken Sabrina a few weeks to consistently hang the words right side up.  Here's a close up of part of our Curious George door. I am always impressed at how many words the girls choose.

So far we have not had to take down a door to put up a new one.  I am not sure what we will do with the word strips when it is time.  I could just throw them out, but I am considering making a Word Book of all of them so the girls can review some of the words they have learned.