Using Your Verb Picture and Word package.

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Our Verb Picture and Word Package is now available in our store.

What’s included in the package?

• Image picture cards
• Word cards
• Image and word cards
• Word mat (images and words)
• Word mat (images only)

Read on if you’d like to know more about some of the ways you can use it.

What’s a verb?

I’m so glad you’ve asked!

The Oxford English Dictionary is certainly the ‘go to’ place to explain verbs best. At a basic level, a verb is an action word. The dog jumps. The clouds float. The student thinks.

Using your Verb Card Package

Here are a few ideas of how you can use the package to support your child with reading, writing, inferring, improving memory skills and much more. The list is not exhaustive and we’d love to hear from you if you come up with any other ways to use these cards yourself.

Matching Game x3

Game 1: Match the word with the word

1. Shuffle the image with word cards and the word cards.
2. Split into 2 or more piles (depending on how many players are playing).
3. Each player takes a pile of cards, holding them face down and not looking at what they are holding.
4. Take it in turns to place a card in the middle of all the players to create a new pile.
5. If you have 2 cards in a row that match, the first person to put their hand on top of the cards and shout ‘VERB’ wins the cards in the centre.
6. Continue.
7. The player with the most cards at the end is the winner.

Game 2: Match the image with the word

1. Shuffle the image only cards and the word cards.
2. Split into 2 or more piles (depending on how many players are playing).
3. Each player takes a pile of cards, holding them face down and not looking at what they are holding.
4. Take it in turns to place a card in the middle of all the players to create a new pile.
5. If you have 2 cards in a row that match, the first person to put their hand on top of the cards and shout ‘VERB’ wins the cards in the centre.
6. Continue.
7. The player with the most cards at the end is the winner.

Game 3: Match the image with the word racing game

1. Use your ‘image only mat’ OR ‘image and word mat’.
2. Cut out the ‘word only’ cards.
3. Shuffle the word cards.
4. Each player has a mat and a set of word cards.
5. The players must match their word cards to the correct image on the mat.
6. The first player to correctly place ALL of their word cards is the winner.

Memory Game x2

Game 1: Match the word with the word

1. Shuffle the image with word cards and the word cards.
2. Place all of the cards face down on a flat surface, spread out so none are overlapping.
3. Take it in turns to turn over 2 cards. If they match, the players keeps the cards.
4. The player with the most cards at the end is the winner.

Game 2: Match the image with the word

1. Shuffle the image with image only cards and the word cards.
2. Place all of the cards face down on a flat surface, spread out so none are overlapping.
3. Take it in turns to turn over 2 cards. If they match, the players keeps the cards.
4. The player with the most cards at the end is the winner.

Vocabulary Game

Version 1

1. Use the image only cards.
2. Players pick a card and must come up with as many different verbs for that image as they can in 30seconds. Eg. If you pick up the ‘building’ card, you might come up with ‘building’, ‘fixing’, ‘hitting’, ‘hammering’ etc.
3. 1 point is given for each word.
4. Players take it in turns to list their words.
5. The player with the most points at the end is the winner.

Version 2

1. Use the image only cards.
2. This as a head-to-head game and have 60 seconds to write as many verbs as you can.
3. If you pick up the ‘building’ card, you might come up with ‘building’, ‘fixing’, ‘hitting’, ‘hammering’ etc.
4. The player with the longest list is the winner of that round.
5. Another player picks the next round and repeat.
6. The player to win the most rounds is the winner. 

Sentence Building Activity

There are lots of ways to support your little reader or writer in building sentences. Sentence building exercises can help your child to develop their working memory, sequential memory (ordering) as well as improve reading fluency (faster, smoother reading).

Check out our post on using the pack for a range of sentence building activity ideas HERE.

Inference (reading the image)

To infer is to be able to read an image or situation (or text) and understand what’s going on without being told directly. It’s a skill. It really is. Children need to build up their understanding of emotions, body language, problem solving strategies etc. to be able to infer things in life and in their reading. To find out more about inference, read our post on it HERE.

Using your pack to encourage inference:

1. Use the image only cards.
2. Each player must say what they think the person is doing, where it might be happening, how the person might be feeling (emotionally or physically).
3. For older players, they could also explain WHY they think this is the case. No answer is wrong IF they can explain their reasons. For example, with our ‘building’ card, they might say “He is building a dog house for his dog because I see a bone. He is in the garden because it would be too messy inside. I think he is happy because he made it himself. He might be tired because he has worked hard.”
4. You can award points for each point made to help find a winner if you have more than one player.

Story Building

Version 1

You can use one or more of the ‘image only’ or ‘image and word cards’.

Look at who is in the image. Consider where it is happening. Consider why it is happening? Think about what happened before and after the image.

Use this information to create your own spoken story.

If you have more than one person, you can take it in turns to speak a sentence each of the story. This is always fun as you never know where the other speakers will lead the tale.

Version 2

Use your ‘image only mat’ or ‘image and word mat’.

Throw a handful of counters on to the mat.

You must now create a story using all the verbs that you have landed on.

If you have more than one person, you can take it in turns to speak a sentence each of the story. This is always fun as you never know where the other speakers will lead the tale.

What’s My Verb?

Version 1

1. Use the ‘image and word’ cards.
2. Players take it in turns to pick a card.
3. They must act out the verb on the card.
4. Other players guess what verb they are acting.
5. The player to guess correctly wins the card. If they do not guess, the card goes back into the pile.
6. The player with the most cards at the end is the winner.

Version 2

1. Use the ‘image only’ cards.
2. Players take it in turns to pick a card and decide a fitting verb for that image.
3. They must act out the verb they have in their head.
4. Other players guess what verb they are acting.
5. The player to guess correctly wins the card. If they do not guess, the card goes back into the pile.
6. The player with the most cards at the end is the winner.

Get your VERB Word Cards and Picture Pack NOW!

Buy and download your Verb Cards and Picture Pack below to support your child learning to read and with SPAG in Ks1 and the early years.