Fantastic Synonym and Antonym Activities! Guest Post by The Teacher
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This is a post my husband (a Title 1 teacher at the time) about an easy fantastic synonym and antonym activity he did with his 3rd grade students. You can usually get packs of color strips like this donated from pretty much anywhere that sells paint!
Fantastic Synonym and Antonym Activities!
Guest Post by Craig Rapinchuk
As a second grade teacher to students in a Title 1 school it becomes harder and harder to find ways to engage the students in learning. So a few tricks are needed to capture their attention and help keep the focus on a meaningless task to them.
One skill that they always get, but hate to practice, is synonym and antonyms. I love to instruct this concept and have them practice with their own examples. The only problem is that over the years they are less apt to spend the time to just create their own examples without me making it memorable to them.
One of the ways to make this fun and easy is to go to a hardware store and find as many paint swatches that you can. It is best to choose the ones that have rows of colors verses columns. Once you get a bunch of those, you can do the examples below.
HINT: Ask for discontinued colors and they will give you the entire box, give the students a list of 20 or more words on a piece of paper and have them choose 3 words to write a synonym or antonym for. They write the word they chose on the top bar of color.
On the subsequent bars they will write as many synonyms or antonyms as color bars available. Use this as a center activity and have them turn in their cards for a grade. Don’t forget to have them write their name on the back!
Other Classroom Resource ideas:
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great idea!
What a great idea!!! Off to the paint store tomorrow 🙂
I have used the paint chips for students to help expand their writing using imagery. The students include the paint chip color in their writing when describing something….
Fantastic idea – can also be used for shades of meaning 🙂
I did a very similar activity with my third graders this year. I had them write a boring, dull, overused word on the dull color and then write synonyms that were more juicy on each color as it became bolder. I then turned them into a bulletin board (split in half for verbs and adjectives) that said "Good writers paint a picture in their readers' minds." You could add paint brushes too! After the unit, I hole punched the paint chips and put them on book rings. My kids used the bulletin board and book rings to find juicy words when revising their writing. They loved it!