Category Archives: Small Group Activities
Rainbow Pom Pom Toss
I found this game online somewhere and sketched it in my idea book a few months ago. I finally decided to make it and I’ve tried it out with my kiddos and they LOVE it!
I call it Rainbow Pom Pom Toss (not sure where the toss part comes in because there is no tossing happening in this game! 🙂
All you need are dice and pom-poms. 🙂
Uppercase letters
Its really easy to play too! The children roll the die that you have programmed with the letters, numbers, or shapes that are on the mat. They place a coordinating pom-pom on the mat.
Here we are using the 1-6 mat. You should of heard the squeals of excitement when we played!! I’ve been asked 5 or 6 times today when we can play again! 🙂
These will be going into my Math and Literacy Work Stations. 🙂 I’ll also be using them in my small groups. 
I put the pom-poms in little buckets that I got in the Target Dollar Spot. The kiddos kept playing until their table ran out of pom-poms and then they put them all back and played again.
I told them if they rolled a number and didn’t have anymore pom-poms left in that color to roll again. I really wanted them keep playing and to learn to share. 🙂
We played with a dot die so that my kiddos had practice matching quantities on the die to the number on the mat.
I’ve also included mats for:
Lowercase letters a-z
Numbers 1-20
Dice 1-6
Shapes
And a blank sheet for you to write in whatever skills you would like for your kiddos to work on. I’ll be adding sight words later as well as pictures of two dice (when we start addition).
You can click on any of the product pictures to get your own. 🙂
Kristen 🙂
Sight Word Ideas
I’ve been in and out of town this summer training teachers on Science kits and have had some down time in the evenings to pin things on Pinterest. Some of the ideas I’ve found are about Sight Words. I’m always looking for more ideas to improve my Word Work Station and to find fun ways for my students to learn sight words. Here are some of my favorites:
To play, you spin the top and whatever word that the top stops on you write on a graph. You stop when one word has been filled to the top on the graph.
The children get a job sheet (top left corner) and find the heart that corresponds to the number on the heart. They unscramble the letters and write down the sight word. She also has the children use the hearts for other activities too!
In this game, the children roll the two dice and create a word using the vowel pre-printed on the task sheet.
The children use the “magic spoon” to read different words. They use the same consonant and hold it up to different word endings.
Tunstall’s Times
The children toss a pom pom into one of the cups in the muffin tin. They then write a word using that word family. When I make this, I will probably use a foam cube instead of a pom pom and label it with 6 different letters. My Kinder kids can then combine the letter on the die (the side that landed up) with the word ending in the cup.
I hope you’ve enjoyed these ideas. I can’t wait to get started on making them! 🙂
Kristen 🙂
Sound Work Station Materials
I couldn’t remember if I had shared these ideas before or not…I got them from Debbie Diller at the workshop she presented in March (ISRA). I’m making them now and using them in Puzzles and Games and ABC Work Stations. Next year, I ‘ll be making a Sound W
Sound Boxes
The children use items stored in a pencil box and match them with the appropriate letter that each item begins with. I store additional items in a plastic hardware drawer unit (each drawer is labeled with a letter). If you don’t have an item for the letter, just use several magnetic letters (upper and lowercase and different font styles) until you find something. This activity will be introduced later this week to the whole class and will be then placed in the Puzzles and Games Work Station.
In addition to this activitiy, I created a Word, Write, Spell sheet:
The children use this sheet to help them learn sight words. Before using this sheet it needs to get laminated so it can be reused. They are provided with cards (business sized cards) with the sight words printed on them (also laminated). The children place five word cards on the left hand side of the page. They then use a dry erase marker to write the words on the lines provided and then spell the words with magnetic letters. I will begin using the page as soon as our laminating machine is repaired. It needs to be printed on 11 x 17 sized paper.
Kristen 🙂
Small Group game and Literacy Work Station materials
Here are some new games we have been playing during our small group time. These materials will also be introduced into our Literacy Work Stations after the children have had a chance to use them.
This is a word family game/rhyming game. The children have two bee hives at the same time and say each word aloud (from the cards) and then match it with the appropriate bee hive. These are from the Mailbox magazine site (2006 I think). They were some online extra materials I was able to print.
In this game, the children can use the cards to find words that match, words that start with the same letter/sound, or words that end with the same sound. We made two sets of these cards, one has the name of the object in the picture written on them and the other set is pictured above. The cards (the white part) came from the Phonemic Awareness book listed below and I glued them on 1/2 of an index card and laminated.
These games are pre-made from a book titled, “Full Color Literacy Activities-Sight words and Rhyming Words“. I like these activites because they are simple to create, easy for the children to complete and also include a review of many math skills (tally marks and graphing). There are many to choose from in this book and these are just a few samples along with a picture showing how I store them. These are also being introduced in small groups and then will be put into Work Stations for the entire class to use.
This is a game from “Phonemic Awareness Activities“. The children take turns rolling the supplied paper die and moving among the pictures to help get the mouse to the house. Each time they land on a picture they need to supply a rhyming word. It could also be used to help children review beginning and ending sounds instead of rhyming words.
This game helps children to review sight words. The children read the word, stamp the letters in the box (using the stamps shown below) and then write the word on the line.
Another idea I am trying is these word family books. I write some simple sentences on the bottom of each page: This is a cot, This is hot, This is stop, etc. The children illustrate the pictures that go with them.
This is Sight Word Blackout (also from the Full Color book). It’s like BINGO and the children say, “Blackout!” when they have covered all their words. You could white out words that you do not learn and write in your own words. You could also set this up in a Word document using a Business Card layout.
This is another index card game I made to help the children learn their sight words (aka Rainbow Words). I wrote the same word on each half of the index card (3 x 5 size) and then cut them in half and laminated. The children have two sets of them– I labeled one set with a “1” in the top corner and the other with a “2”. The children can play with the cards in one set and not worry about getting them mixed up with the cards in set 2.
Kristen 🙂
Kristen's Kindergarten 