MAINKATA™ Level 1 Word Puzzles Book 1

In the first book of Level 1 (for ages 6 and below), suitable for pre-school kids, we begin our approach by introducing the alphabet in a word-search setting, as sampled in Picture (A).

Instead of searching a word, we ask the children to do a letter search. For kids who have just learned letters of the alphabet, the letter search activities would excite them and at the same time helps them to remember how the letters look like.

For parents and teachers, the instructional texts act as a script for you to guide the kids on what they are expected to do on each page.

Picture (B) represents a set of activities for children to rearrange the given letters according to their sequence in the alphabet.

Picture (C) is a sample activity that helps the kids improve on their spelling of simple 3-letter and 4-letter words. In this example, the children are expected to find as many of the word "dog" they can find on the page. While searching for the many occurrences of the same word, the kids are actually being drilled on spelling the word.

Word search in Level 1 is limited to words spelled from left to right and top to bottom only. No words are spelled diagonally.

Picture (D) is a sample of a maze-type puzzles where children are expected to write down the letters they see in their path from start to finish. They are then asked to spell out and read aloud the word from the letters they have written. Writing practice goes on here as well.

Picture (E) is a sample activity that guides children to eventually do activities as shown on picture (F) where they are expected to form 3-letter words from the given letters.

The above are just a sample of activities you can find in the book. There are 44 pages of word puzzle activities altogether.

MAINKATA™ Level 2 Word Puzzles Book 1

In Level 2, the approach is very thematic. For example, in Picture (A), we ask the children to rearrange the letters to spell the name of animals. Then we have word-search puzzles to find the names of animals, similar to Picture (B) where we introduced musical instruments in the word-search puzzle.

In Level 2, word search puzlles are still limited to finding words that are spelled left to right and top to bottom.

In Picture (C), these type of activities would engage the children to go through the maze and write down the letters they see in their path, one by one, to eventually spell a long word. In saying out the word out loud, they will discover what the long word is.

Activities as shown in Picture (D) gets the children to be creative and try to create smaller words based on the long word given at the top of the page. From the word "AMBULANCE", they are asked to write down smaller words, using only letters from the word "AMBULANCE".

Picture (E) shows the type of activities where children will be asked to calculate the points based the values attached to the letters of a word. This is a pre-requisite step before they embark on later activities, as shown in Picture (F) where they are asked to build as many words from the given letters (which have different numerical values) and calculate their score. These type of activities encourage children to be creative in coming up with words that have the highest scores. They can then compare it with their friends to see who performs better.

The above are just a sample of activities you can find in the book. There are many more activities where children are exposed to and play with words like names of animals, musical instruments, fruits, vegetables, birds, fishes, body parts, countries, etc.

MAINKATA™ Level 3 Word Puzzles Book 1

Level 3 gives more emphasis on vocabulary enrichment, as well as general knowledge that spans across multiple areas of study: science, geography, etc.

It starts out simple, yet meaningful as we go along following the approach that we use. Picture (A) is a pre-requisite for Level 3 word search activities. Words are spelled backwards, so they need to correct them. The words that we introduced here are grouped in a way that expose children to other words that may have the same meaning, or are associated to one another in some ways.

As sampled in Picture (D), the word search puzzle in Level 3 is unlike the ones in Level 1 and 2 where words are arranged in order, and not spelled backwards. In Level 3, the words can be spelled from left to right, right to left, top to bottom, bottom to top, and also diagonally.

Pictures (B) and (C) are sample activities where children are asked to fill in similar blanks with different letters to make 5 different words. Activities such as these tests the children if their vocabulary is broad enough to make up all these words.

Activities like the one shown in Picture (E) is somewhat similar to the ones in Level 2. The difference is that the approach is different. In Level 2, it was more of a thematic approcah. In level 3, more of vocabulary enrichment. For example, the words LARGE, JUMBO and GIANT, are grouped on the same page where the task is only to calculate the points. The points here have bigger value for the older kids.

Again, activities like the one shown in Picture (E) are pre-requisites for the ones shown in Picture (F). Children can challenge each other in coming up with words with the highest scores, based on the letters and points given. At this level, some of the vowels are omitted from the letter choices. This provides extra challenge for the children to come up with words.