Using Pantomime as a Learning Tool

In Kindergarten class the other day I was given the task of teaching the children the ending sounds of words. In particular it was the –ap and –at sounds. Fortunately a lot of the words lent themselves to actions students could perform as a way to express their knowledge of exactly what the word means. In this activity I first had the children close their eyes and then I wrote up on the board a word. Their goal was to A.) not to say the word aloud [the most difficult part as it turned out] B.) try to act it out the best way they new how. C.) other students were to then guess what the word was. Words used included: hat, cat, mat, sat, rat, bat, fat, pat…. cap, lap, map, rap, sap (hard one-had to explain it), tap, wrap (I had to do this one), and nap (they loved doing this one especially when their teacher was returning back to the room). Afterwards the children had a cut, match, and paste activity consisting of the above list, where they were to match the picture to the word. Most importantly to them, they also got to color the pictures after matching and pasting was all done.