Go Take a Hike!

Do you like to take hikes in the great outdoors?  Well, here is a game I am calling, "Take a hike!"   As the child takes a hike through the forest, you can help reinforce the identification of sight words (or even letters, sounds, numbers, etc...)!
Click on the picture below for the file.

To play, you simply write whatever you would like the child to practice in the empty boxes on the game board and also create matching flash cards.  Mix the cards up and have the child read through each until they get to the first word on the board.  Continue this until you get to the finish. 

This game played the same way as Road Race, (which in case you missed it, is a game I posted about here).

I hope you enjoy!!



Reading and Writing Sight Words

End of the year assessment time is upon us.  So while I complete my assessments with one student from the small groups of kindergarten students I pull, the other students will be practicing the 50 sight words they need to know by the end of the year,. 

I fell in love with the "Popcorn Word Hunt" I saw a couple months ago on Mrs. Morrow's Kindergarten blog.  So just as she did, I filled a little bottle with popcorn kernels and filled them with the sight words printed on the little pieces of popcorn. 

If you click on the picture to the left, you can access the little pieces of popcorn for the bottle and the pages the students will write on. I will print the first two pages front-to-back.  The students will write the first 12 words they see and then read the words to a friend.  (Each piece of popcorn has two lines because my district uses Handwriting Without Tears.) 

Another activity the students will do is very similar, (but not quite as cute).  I created sight word cards with the HWT lines on each word.  I then printed and laminated them and will have the students select six cards.  They will practice writing each word three times and then choose one word to include in a sentence with an illustration.
You can click on the links below for the files:
Sight Word Cards with HWT Lines
Sight Word Writing

Thanks!

Road Race-sight words, letters, sounds, etc...

A few years back I attended a wonderful conference where the presenter discussed the fact that an average learner needs about 35 exposures to a word for it to become automatic.  A struggling learner may need more than 50 exposures before a word is recognized, and may take as many as 150 exposures to master it automatically!!! 

Road Race (Texas Center for Reading and Language Arts, 2000) is one of the great resources she provided as a way to increase students' exposure to sight words.  Have you played this before?  The game board was quite bland, so I went ahead and jazzed it up a bit by adding some clip art.

I love this game and so do the kids!  The kids really like driving the little car around the game board.  (You can find little cars in the party favor section at Target.)  I especially love how the child goes through and reads the pile of words over and over again, therefore increasing their exposure to the words.  I also use this game for letter and letter-sound identification.  I haven't done so myself, but I am sure you could even use it for number identification or math facts!
~ Mrs. Mc

CHEEZ-IT Spelling

Who likes CHEEZ-IT crackers?  Our family definitely does!  Have you seen the Scrabble CHEEZ-IT crackers?  Love them!  They are a teacher’s and parent’s dream!  I have been working on a couple of projects to do with them.

First, to help P practice connecting her letters and sounds, I thought I would combine Elkonin Boxes with the crackers.  She isn’t ready to segment words into individual sounds on her own yet, so I segmented and named the sounds for P and she picked out the corresponding letters (out of a small pile that I had gone through and preselected for her). 

Building the words made her awfully hungry of course, so she ate them as a snack afterward.  As she ate them, she named each letter and said each sound.

Then to help some of my K students identify and write their sight words, I thought I would do the following activity.  They will need to read the words on the sheet, build the words by finding the corresponding letters (matching the lower case to the upper case), and then write the words.

I haven’t tried it in the classroom yet.  I didn’t know if the actual boxes of CHEEZ-IT crackers would provide enough letters for them each to build their words.  (If it works and there is interest, I just may make more of these sheets with other words.  Please let me know if you have tried this or anything like it and how it has worked out for you!)

~ Mrs. Mc

Sight Words-Barrel of Monkeys-BANANAS!!

The day after I saw Mrs. Jump’s Barrel of Monkeys math activity, I walked into one of the first grade classrooms I work in and what did I see?  A huge empty pretzel container!  The teacher didn’t have a use in mind for it, but she just “couldn’t throw it away” (I think I have that problem too), so she generously let me have it and I created my own Barrel of Monkeys for a sight word game I will call, “Bananas!” 

I went to our local Parent-Teacher Store and bought pre-cut monkeys and wrote sight words on their bellies.  I added bananas to some of the monkeys without words and then laminated them all. 
I made the small red Barrel of Monkeys for my little one to practice identifying upper and lower case letters.  (I found the red container in my recycling bin that same day, placed there by Mr. Mc!  What was he thinking?!  He doesn’t have the habit of “saving” things like I do!)

This game will be played just like the game, “Bang!” Or “Oops!”  The children will take turns picking a monkey out of the barrel and reading the words.  If they pick a monkey with a banana, they will need to say, “Bananas!” and put their monkeys back in the barrel.  The goal is to have as many monkeys as you can at the end of the game.  Anna over at Crazy for First Grade created her own version called, “Tweet!” and is giving it away for free because she is almost up to 100 followers!   

~  Mrs. Mc

Tic-Tac-Toe

Who likes to play Tic-Tac-Toe?  I love to!  And I also love using this game as an instructional tool for students to practice forming their letters and to write the high frequency words!!  It is not only quick and easy, but the children LOVE it!!

I like to laminate the boards I use.  I have each student or team use a different colored Vis-à-Vis marker to write their letters/words.  Three letters/words of the same color in a row is the winner!  When rinsed under water, the Vis-a-Vis marker comes right off, then I can use it again and again!



Click here for a copy of the board I use.