KidBibs LT#8: Content Riddles: Fun Strategies for Home and School

By Joyce Melton Pagés, Ed.D.
Mother of two children, President of KidBibs

LearningTip #7 article provided general information about using content riddles to help children learn and reinforce content/information with riddles. This article is intended to build on the general strategies that were provided in last week's article. If you have not read last week's article yet, you may want to read it before you read this one.

These specific strategies can be adapted for use with younger children and older children. In addition, they promote highly conceptualized thinking in fun, interesting ways. Finally, they are easy to use at home and at school.

Parenting Activities

1. Zoo Animal Riddle Book. Take a trip to the zoo. Have the child take pictures of their favorite animals. When the pictures are developed, mount each picture on a separate sheet of paper. Then have the child look at the picture and write or dictate some statements (in the form of "What am I?" riddles) about the animal. Write these riddles on a separate sheet of paper. Then write the name of the animal on the picture page. Group these pages together with the riddle first, then the picture (and the name of the animal), next riddle, then the picture, etc.

Example:
Page 1
What am I?
I have four legs.
I look like a horse.
I have black and white stripes.
What am I?

Page 2
Picture of the zebra with the words "a zebra"
written under the picture.

Page 3
What am I?
I am a very large animal.
I am brown and white.
My legs are very long.
My neck is very long.
What am I?

Page 4
Picture of a giraffe with the words "a giraffe"
written under the picture.

Etc.
(Additional riddles can be written
to go with other animal pictures.)

The child's Zoo Animal Riddle Book could be bound by staples, metal rings, ribbons, etc. These books are fun for the child to read to a friend or relative. The person can guess the animal and turn the page for the "surprise" answer!

Riddle books can be written about other trips, topics, objects, etc. The child can even cut pictures out of a magazine or catalogue, describe them in riddle form, and put them together in the form of a riddle book.

2. Read all about it! Parents wanting to encourage children to read for pleasure may suggest that the child read information about a topic of interest (but don't tell anyone what they're reading about). Then they could write a content riddle to "stump" friends and family. If several members of the family are doing this, it can become a really fun activity.

Teachers can use content riddles to introduce content, stimulate interest, or to review information that has been taught.

Teaching Activities

1. Content riddles can be used to stimulate an interest in the next unit topic to be studied. For example, on Monday (the week before the unit begins) the teacher could mount one general clue related to the unit topic on the bulletin board. Children could try to guess the topic. On Tuesday, another clue (a bit more specific) can be mounted under the previous clue; the children can try again to guess the topic. The same thing occurs on subsequent days (with clues to guess the topic getting more and more specific) until Friday. On this day, the clue should be clear enough that the children identify the exact unit topic for the next week.

2. Content riddles can also be used to review content studied in an instructional unit. A good way to review unit content is to have children consider all of the terms learned in an instructional unit. (It may help to have the students generate these as a class while the teacher writes them on chart paper or a transparency.) The children can then write content riddles (individually or in small groups)