Hand-made Swatters for Sight Words

Swattin' Words? But what do you do when you need fly swatters for a word game, and you can't get your hands on any?

Make your own word grabbers! Instead of fly swatters, we rolled up construction paper and stapled a paper hand to each rolled "arm" or stick.  I used Krista Wallden's free dotty hand clip art (from teachers pay teachers) for the hands. You can find her great clip art here: Creative Clips, and her dotty hands are here: Handful of Dots.

This was easy and fun. I set out several sight word flash cards at a time. Then I called out words for them to smack. My boys were competitive but could not stop laughing as they read their words. This is an old favorite activity for word recognition. I have done all kinds of versions of this. If you haven't tried it, you've got to! And if you don't have any fly swatters on hand, make your own!

Those party store magnifying glasses....

These little plastic things are such a hit with my first grade reading group! (I have four kiddos.) Getting them to do word reading can be a struggle for some who are less than attentive...Whether one is twirling in her seat, or another is more concerned with tipping his chair back--get one of those cheap little magnifying glasses and play word detective! They love using them after we've read a book (a close reading)--even though it's more of a literal "close reading", word hunting is fun detective work.