Opposites by Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake and published by Puffin is a fantastic little book that helps you learn opposites. It has lovely clear pictures and words and there are flaps to lift to reveal the opposite of the picture you are looking at. The Enormous Crocodile is pictured throughout the book and he isn't always behaving himself and my son finds this funny.
Activities
Hard and soft hunt
Introduce new vocabulary
Open and closed door spotting
Tall and short flower spotting
Assault course
Hot and cold activity
Cooked and raw foods (and discussion)
Hot and cold drinks
Spicy and cool foods
Sweet savoury foods
Food texture discussion
House hunt
Weighing activity
Pasta necklaces
Animal sorting
Outdoor
There are some lovely outdoor activities that go along with this book. The first you can do at home or out and about. Send your child/children off to find some hard and soft items. If you have more than one child you could send them off as a team (team soft and team hard) or they could see who could find the most. It could be a good time to introduce some more opposite words like bumpy, smooth, wet and dry into the mix to help widen vocabulary. An activity out and about could be open and closed door spotting. This might be a good one to do in a town or city as there is more likely to be some open doors. Older children could do a tally chart of the different doors or if you have more than one child you could do a competition and the first to find ten open doors wins. If there are no open doors and it is summer then you could do it with short and tall plants instead. A fun activity could be an assault course. You could set this up with things to go over, under, up, down, in and out. You could just use things that are around the house like blankets, chairs etc. to set up the course. Older children could help think of things to include and if more than one child is taking part then you could tie how long it takes to complete the course.
Cooking/Food
There are lots of hot and cold foods that you can play around with with your child/children. A nice one to try is hot and cold pizza. You can make the pizza with your child/children and then they can eat it hot and then when it is cold and compare the differences. There are lots of things you can do this with like chicken nuggets, quiche etc. You could also do this activity with cooked and raw foods (foods that are safe to eat raw) like carrots or tomatoes and then you can do things like bread and toast. You could have a chat with your child/children about how foods changed when they are cooked. Another activity could be to have hot and cold drinks so you could do hot chocolate and then cold chocolate milk or hot and cold juice. If you wanted to do something a bit different then you could do spicy foods and then cooling foods like yogurt or cucumber. You could also do savoury and sweet foods. It's a good time to maybe introduce some new foods that your child/children haven't tried yet and then you can talk to them about opposites and the different textures of the foods.
Indoor Activities
There are lots of opposites mentioned in the book so you could send your child/children on a house hunt to find things that are big and little, empty and full, tall and short, open and closed. This should keep them busy for a bit. A fun activity (if you have some scales available) could be to weigh different things around the house. You could use bathroom or kitchen scales and your child/children can have fun putting different things on the scales and then they could sort them into heavy and light or put them in a line from lightest to heaviest. For an activity involving the opposites big and little and long and short you could do pasta necklaces. Get different types of pasta that can be threaded and then paint the pasta different colours. When it is dry your child/children can make long and short necklaces and they can do it in a pattern of big and little. Don't forget to share pictures. I would love to see them. A final activity to go along with this book is an animal sorting activity. This can be done with drawings of animals, toys or stuffed animals. They can be sorted by day and night or sea and land and anything else you can think of.
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