Phonics Activities
Upper & Lower Case Memory - Halloween Edition
I created this game for my Kinder friend. I thought it would be ideal to create a self-check Memory game by adding a picture that matched each letter sound. Since I made this in October, I decided a Halloween theme would be fun! Sadly, my Kinder friend was sick the day we were supposed to play, so we will give it a go in November. I broke down the matches into smaller chunks to not overwhelm my Kinder. I separated them into three groups: letters mastered, letters that are recognizable, and unknown letters. When we get to play, my plan is to have my Kinder work their way through the groups until frustration level is reached, which ideally should be the last group.
Short Vowel Pumpkin Toss
My Firsties have been wrapping up short vowel sounds, so I made a simple review game for them using ball pit balls I found at a yard sale and pumpkin buckets from Target {Halloween section}. FYI: plastic buckets are dry erase. :) The balls didn't stay in the basket. I dumped them all over my room. My Firsties were only allowed to pick up two - one for each hand. They had to sound out each phoneme of the word before putting it together and deciding which bucket to toss it in. They had a blast with this game!
I changed it up for my Second graders. They were working on comparing short and long /i/ sounds, so I wrote both types of words on the balls. They had to pick up one short and one long before bringing them over to be sounded out and tossed into the correct bucket. They each had two buckets {short i, long i} and could toss their balls into their buckets.
I have seen similar ball pit balls at Target. I will link them here.
Witchy Word Hunt
Another fun find in the Target Halloween section. It's a witch hat ring toss. I made the cards from a list of short vowel words I found on Teachers Pay Teachers. While I was making the cards, I decided to add words which are a little tougher so I could use with all my Littles. I allowed them to pick up five cards at a time. They had to sound out each phoneme before deciding which hat it matched. All my Littles enjoyed this game.
Math Activities
Ghostly Doubles
I created this ghost and wrote sums of doubles all over it. Only using doubles, my Littles had to write the double addition sentence, solve it, and cover the sum on the ghost. The dominoes on the side are the "dead" pile because their sum was already covered on the ghost. It might be helpful to have dominoes that have a double ten or even twelve.
Eyeball Math
I designed this game to work for both addition and multiplication. I bought the eyeballs at Dollar Tree and wrote 1-12 on each set. I bought two sets of each color. Add velcro, a spinning nose, and you have a math game! Students take turns pulling two eyeballs out of the cauldron. They MUST draw the color of their nose in order to keep the eyeball on their skull. When they have two numbers, they must either add or multiply {depending on the age group}. They write the answer in the mouth and add a point if they are correct.