Alphabet Soup ─ Language Arts Enrichment Activities

Use these quick, ready-to-use activities to add an element of interest to your language arts program. Whether they are used to supplement the regular curriculum or to provide activities for home learning, these exercises will build students' abilities to use words with flexibility and originality.

This long-time favorite is the perfect supplement for language arts or literature classrooms. It's packed with games and activities that draw young and inventive minds into word analysis, vocabulary building, and literary awareness. Stimulating reproducible worksheets include practice in:

• idioms,
• onomatopoeia,
• slang,
• metaphors,
• spoonerism,
• analogies,
• hyperbole,
• similes,
• rebus,
• hinky pinky,
• relationships, and
• word squares.

The purpose of this book is to create an awareness of words that goes beyond the mere phonetic analysis of words usually associated with reading and spelling instruction. As a result of doing the activities in this book, students should see words as vehicles for creating illusions, ways of expressing feelings, and means of communicating ideas. Improve writing, build thinking skills, and add an element of fun with this book. Serve a tantalizing dish of language experiences spiced with portions of thinking—serve an Alphabet Soup.

Dianne Draze holds both a bachelor's degree in education with a major in mathematics and a master's degree in curriculum and instruction. Beginning her tenure in the field of education in 1968, she has found many ways to enrich the educational experiences of children. She taught upper elementary grades, junior high mathematics, English and history, gifted programs for grades 1–8, and education classes at the university level.

Draze founded Dandy Lion Publications in 1977, creating a publishing house that specialized in curriculum materials that were appropriate for able learners and gifted students, that combined motivating content with challenging activities, and that were easy for teachers to use. In the capacity of owner and editor, she wrote more than 50 books and edited an additional 119 books. Her goal, whether writing or editing, was to create materials that would engage students in thinking, creating, making new discoveries, and applying what they learned to new situations. A person with a great curiosity, she has written curriculum guides on many topics and is always interested in whatever topic she is currently researching or editing.

Draze has retired from full-time involvement in Dandy Lion Publications and currently consults, writes, and edits on a part-time basis.