Classroom rebuses can be found in stories and puzzles. In a classroom class rebuses can help students’ concentration skills and exercise their brains. If you need examples some of either kind for your classroom, then read on.
If you are a teacher of young children who are just starting to learn to read, then classroom rebus stories can be very helpful. They are not only interesting, but can help the children by making reading fun. Rebus stories have a picture in place of a word. Some of them have both the word and the picture to further help the child to learn words.
There are some sites online where you can find classroom rebuses:
The rebus stories on ABC Teach.com have the picture only and not the word. The key at the bottom shows what word each picture represents. These are printable and ready to use in your classroom. They even have a space for the student’s name and the date. There are 15 printouts that are available to non-members. If you want more, membership is a very small monthly fee.
Highlights Kids.com has three rebus stories with pictures and the words they represent that you can make. You just click on a picture and it is added to the story. These are really fun because they are sometimes silly. You can also listen to the real story upon which the activity was based. There is also a story called “Desert Doves” that you can listen to that has background music. These stories are nicely done and any student would love to visit this site.
If you are looking for classroom rebuses that are puzzles, there are many of those available online as well. A rebus puzzle is sometimes called a pictogram, where letters, numbers, and pictures go together to make a word or phrase. These are very good for students because they exercise both sides of the brain. They are good mental exercises.
Here are some examples of rebus puzzles:
PAWALKRK is: a Walk in the Park
KNEELIGHT LIGHT is: Neon Lights
More of these can be found at Kids.Niehs.Nih.gov
Some rebus puzzles are more complicated, having a word that is divided into parts. Here’s an example:
GR + 8 = GREAT2 + L = TOOLD + [picture of a light] = DELIGHTF + [picture of an ear] = FEAR
Some other common symbols in rebus puzzles are: the number 2 for “to” or “too”, the letter R for “are”, and the number 4 for “for.” A picture of a bee can stand for the letter B or the word “be”, a picture of a knot can stand for “not”, and a picture of a sheep can stand for the U sound (ewe).
If you want rebuses to printout for your classroom, visit Teaching Ideas.co.uk. They also provide the answers. At Free Math Worksheets.net you can pick rebuses or brain teasers and create your own worksheet to print out for use in your classroom.
Here are two more sites with rebus puzzles. The first has 100 puzzles. Fun With Words.com has not only 100 rebus puzzles but many more puzzles, like anagrams, Boggle, and Hangman. It has some interesting resources, like pangrams, oxymorons, tongue twisters, palindromes, and more. IQ Test Experts.com has over 60 rebus puzzles. There are also links to brain teasers and riddles.