Magnetic Poetry - Playing with Words

I picked up a bargain in Borders this week for $3 (on sale, of course) - the Original Magnetic Poetry. If you haven't used it before, Magnetic Poetry is a set of words printed onto magnetic sheets, which can be separated and used to form sentences.

It's a great way to encourage literacy and vocab development, teamwork, etc.

I'm planning to use it next week to teach parts of speech.

Over the years, I have given away many a set to family and friends.

I gave my cousin a Kids' Kit when she was little. She proceeded to decorate the fridge with a very long, wordy and highly descriptive story of (I think) a frog, a princess and a castle. At that stage, she was too young to grasp the concept of run-on sentences and why they are bad. But to see a kid having fun playing with words - priceless!

Another time, when my aunt was leaning Chinese, I gave her a set of Chinese Magnetic Poetry - same concept, but with the Chinese characters and (I think) pinyin one one side, and English translation on the other.

I also gave someone a Pick-Up Lines set, and the Office set is currently adorning my filing cabinet at work. This has been used to form "toilet paradigm", something about working with monkeys, and other appropriate phrases. One of my lovely colleagues has used it to make a mural.

There is also in my possession Shakespearean insults and love quotations which I picked up at Anne Hathaway's cottage in Stratford-on-Avon. Not Magnetic Poetry, but similar.