Have you heard that 2/3 of the 9th grade achievement gap is due to Summer Slide? This Summer, we’re helping parents make sure their kids’ mind muscles stay strong and active by emailing a learning activity every day between Memorial Day and Labor Day. We’ll cover the whole Multiple Intelligence spectrum.
Our first installment (a word smart activity) was sent this morning—featured below. Want to sign up? Do it here.
99 Days of Summer Learning
Activity #1: Family-nyms
These days, it seems like everyone is LOLing about something every time they TTY. “Net Lingo” has everyone from kindergarteners to senior citizens speaking or typing in acronyms lately.
Using acronyms can also give your family a secret language of your own either around the house or out in public. Today, figure out some codes you can use to talk to each other without having guests or passers-by in on your secrets. Some ideas to get you rolling:
EOT (elbows off the table) at restaurants
SEH (send ’em home) when you’re ready for a play date to come to a close
GTGPP (got to go to the bathroom) keep your eyes peeled for a public restroom!
After you’ve come up with some great ones, talk about some of the other places you see acronyms in your daily life other than online. It can be eye-opening how prevalent they are in our daily life—and how we’ve been using them for years to communicate big ideas quickly.
Want more acronym fun? Play Acronymble! You can do it yourself or buy the real thing. Here’s how to play:
Have each family member pick a letter randomly or pick Scrabble tiles/magnetic letters out of a bag. Players need to decide what the letters in the acronym stand for out of the letters that are picked. For example, if players received the letters E.U.M.G., one might write, “Elvis Unglued My Grandfather,” and another, “Eek!!! Ugly Man-eating Gerbils!”
Each player then votes for his favorite acronym—but you can’t vote for your own! The beauty of this game are no right and wrong answers…and it’s different every time. You can make it tougher by putting a time limit on each round or varying the length of the acronyms (the game goes between 3 and 7 letters).