L's Magic Word Box

L (38 months) is getting better at sounding out CVC words, but she goes through periods where she resists reading so I have to be creative with reading activities and cater them to her interests.  In the girls' many creative dramatic play sessions, L often likes to pretend that she is "Magic L-" as she waves her wand and casts magic spells.  This gave me an idea for a very simple reading/writing game we've been doing -  L's Magic Word Box....

L really enjoys tracing words.  Right now I'm not worrying about teaching her how to form the letters correctly, but rather just get lots of practice with pen control.  When I told L that she could write words to put in her Magic Word Box, she was quite excited.  So almost every day, I ask her what word she wants to add to her box.  She gets to choose the word all by herself, but mostly she's been selecting words she knows how to read or ones related to a topic we recently discussed or read about...

It's fun to put these words in the box (a $1 recipe holder), but even more fun to play with them.  To play, L chooses a word and then waves her magic wand as she says her spell.  For example, "Hocus Pocus, Bibitty Bog, turn this dog into a FROG!".

 
Our unsuspecting dogs have been turned into all sorts of different animals and objects (I love the dog's "save me" look in the above photo).  L always keeps her Magic Word Box in a safe place so a witch doesn't steal it and use the words to turn us all into frogs!  It's really neat to combine reading and dramatic play, and L seems to have a really good time with it.  Some day in the future, I think the girls and I will sit together and write a story about the magic word box and what happens when one day it got into the wrong hands and Magic L had to save the day...