WordPlay Café
This one’s for the teachers.
Within the last year, we have been stretched quite thin when it comes to budgetary matters, and very few sectors of our economy have witnessed as dramatic a cut in services as our schools. With this in mind, I’ve made the decision to put my greediness aside, and offer some help instead.
In 2004, I wrote and illustrated WordPlay Café (Williamson Publishing, an Ideals company). It’s a fun, educational romp through the more common aspects of linguistics for kids, and was driven by my desire to not only present the humor in wordplay, but also explain how it works, so that kids may begin to build their own unique brand of phonetic fun.
Here’s the deal.
Below you will find links to the book as chapter-by-chapter PDF files. Some chapters are as large as 5MB, so allow some time to download (right click or control click), especially if the site is busy. (Front Matter & Chapter 1, and Chapters 5 & 6 are combined into one file.) Viewing will require the use of the Adobe Reader, which is available at their website for no charge. Be sure to have your students read through the front matter first, as it explains how the book works.
All I ask in return is that the files remain in the classroom and be treated in a scholarly manner. In addition, I would appreciate any feedback on the book and would ask that any purchase or review of the book go through amazon.com. Should you assemble classroom activities around a particular page or idea, I’d love to share it on the website with other teachers. Be sure to pass this link to other educators as well. A Parent’s Choice® award winner.
Teach. Learn. Enjoy!
-Michael Kline
If patience (or hard disk space) isn’t your virtue, the entire book can be viewed online as well at FiledBy. Be sure to tell them “Thanks!”
Got this link from The Homeschool Mom; thanks so much to you for providing this free. As a linguist myself and a homeschooler these books are invaluable for teaching. I look forward to learning and playing some new word games!
You’re very welcome. Let everyone else know too. Thanks!
i just got it from the same link – we are homeschooling, too! it’s wonderful to have a resource like this to encourage her language play – thank you!
Whenever I give demonstrations or talks at local libraries, the homeschoolers are consistently the kids with all the answers, so kudos to you!
Looks like a lot of fun! Thanks! My daughter loves to play games as a part of our school day. I am sure there will be much for me to learn as well.
Homeschoolers and Classroom Teachers:
It’s fantastic to get this all for free – THANK YOU DOGFOOSE! But you may want to consider how much it’ll cost you or your district in ink to print it out vs. purchasing it since it’s not expensive and it is a fantastic book. This book is SOOO COOOOL!
As a homeschooler, I went ahead and downloaded all of it so I could cleanly print out individual pages when I really need to. But I’m just going to spend the 10 bucks and get the book. Even though I go for everything free that I can, I know that this one is a keeper – and for keepers, I open the wallet!
Have fun!
Thanks everyone for the nice comments. I was laughing most of the time while writing WordPlay Cafe (which is the way it should be…). If anyone has a spare moment, please go to the book’s page on amazon and write a review, and be honest. Woe is the person (okay, author) that refuses to learn–one way or the other.
Hi..Thank you so much for this wonderful resource..I’ve been having huge bummer getting my son to love reading and writing and anything that has got to do with language art..playing with words might just do the trick.
Thank you so much.
@Ian
Hey Ian, tell your son that if he reads the book and engages in just one of the activities, I will send him a personally autographed copy–replete with a drawing of my cat Baxter.
Hi Michael,
Just wanted to say thank you.
My children will love this!
Blessings
thanks so much for providing this
Thanks for providing such an amazing resource. It will be used quite frequently in the classroom.
Thank you for making this available. It looks fantastic and I’m sure we’ll use it a lot in our homeschooling.