We took inspiration from one of my son’s favourite books and focused on learning opposites.
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This activity for learning opposites was based around the fabulous book “Opposites” by Sandra Boynton. My son has only had the book for a few weeks but already loves it. I decided to make it more “real” for him.
I went through the book and decided on items that would demonstrate the pairs of opposites. I printed out some word labels to stick to the opposite examples, and this tied all the activities together (link to free printable at the end). I wasn’t sure if it would be too many words to do all in one go, so I split it into two sections.
Big and Small
I got our huge gym ball and taped a ping pong ball on top of it!
Short and Tall
The first idea to come to mind here was my husband and son! So I found a photo of them that really highlighted the height difference.
High and Low
I taped the name labels to a high and low spot on a door frame. But I also used the ping ping ball, throwing it up for “high” and bouncing it to the floor for “low”. No photos, unfortunately!
Fast and Slow
I used F’s super speedy key cars and an almost-out-of-battery train. I think matching the words to his own toys really helped him to understand the differences.
Heavy and Light
As tempting as it was to use a really heavy hammer and a feather, I played it a little safer and used a heavy book and a light book.
Day and Night
I remade the “N” from the Canon ABC Pop-Up Booklets which has a pull-tab to move between day and night.
In and Out
Many possible options here but I decided to go simple with two orange cups; one with pompoms in, one with them out.
Whisper and Shout
For this pair I used a kazoo (which makes a breathy sound when you don’t play it correctly) and a megaphone – which handily already had the word “shout” printed on it! I demonstrated both sounds and F had a go with the kazoo.
The next day we continued with the rest of the book.
Weak and Strong
Rather than demonstrate this as a weak or strong person, I decided to use the imagery of the straw and brick houses from F’s The Three Little Pigs book.
Right and Wrong
I thought that some Boynton-style silliness was probably overdue by this point, so I put a pair of F’s socks correctly onto a toy frog, and incorrectly onto the ears of a toy bear.
Hot and Cold
This was an on-the-spot preparation, with one hot pancake and one straight out of the freezer.
Young and Old
Like the short/tall pair, I wanted to make this recognisable to F so I used a photo of him with his Granny.
Wet and Dry
For this I used a wet and dry sponge and put them in little dishes.
Hello and Goodbye
I got this idea from Sunflower Storytime’s Hello Goodbye Craft and downloaded this super-cute giraffe image from OpenClipArt to make my own version. I cut out the front and back giraffes and glued them together with craft sticks in the middle. This was BY FAR his favorite part of the whole book!
If you’d like a free printable of the words used in this activity, please send me an email at georgina @ craftulate.com (remove the spaces!)
