Family and Homeschool Activities: Contractions

These family and homeschool activities are designed to complement the Contractions topic on BrainPOP Jr.

Contraction Jar

Challenge your child and, if possible, the whole family, to not use a single contraction in speech. It’s a lot harder than it sounds! Provide an empty jar or bowl for every player. Every time anyone says a contraction, place a counter in his or her jar. You may want to use dried beans, raisins, beads, or paper clips. Count up the contents of the jars at the end of the day. You may wish to employ skip-counting strategies or create a tally chart or bar graph together as a math connection. Who is the winner?

Contraction Hunt

Write a list of different contractions, such as should’ve, isn’t, wouldn’t, won’t, and he’s. You may also want to add the expanded versions of the contractions to the list as well. Then challenge your child to find every word on the list in different books and magazines. Have him or her write down where the word was found (don’t forget title and author) and the actual sentence it appears in. As a fun activity, you and your child can take all the sentences and make your own silly story by piecing them together.