What Can You Do With a Plastic Egg?

How many ways can you use a plastic egg? I'm glad you asked... ;)

Sight word Scrambler: Place the letters of a sight word in an egg. Have your students put the letters together to make the sight word. You could have them try to unscramble it on their own or have them look at the word to build and rebuild. 

You can write the word inside the egg or put a small piece of paper with the correct spelling inside.

Sight Word Game: 

You can also write the sight words on the outside of the eggs. 

Place a colored dot on a cube. 

  

Roll the cube. If you land on blue, read a blue egg. Continue until all eggs are out of the basket. 

Going on a sight word egg hunt:

Hide your eggs all around your house or classroom. When they find the egg, they will read the word on the egg. If they cannot read the egg, hide it again. If they can, they get to put it in their basket.

Matching up parts of the egg:

You can match up onset and rime or lowercase and uppercase letters. 

Last, I have a little freebie for you! :) 

This is an initial sound sort activity:

Put a picture card in each egg.  Set out two baskets and the bunny/rabbit cards. Students will find the eggs and look at the picture inside. Then, they will decide if the word begins with b or r and place it in the correct basket. You can download these picture cards here. 

If I'm missing anything, please comment! I'd love to hear what you do with these little plastic eggs. :)

Building Sentences while Practicing Sight Words

How do you practice sight words for those beginning readers? This year I was asking myself that same question. I wanted to give my students opportunities to practice reading these words in context without being overwhelmed by too much text. My students were at this in between place. Ready and wanting to read something, but not quite ready for a book (even a simple beginner sight word book). So, I introduced Build a Sentence. This was meant to be a kindergarten center originally, but then I found it was actually perfect for my reading groups. Even with just a few sight words, we could make several different sentences. 

The sentence building mat helps them to easily build their own sentences. I started with just 5 sight words: I, We, see, my and the. I had about 10 different picture word cards to go with those words. Together, we'd build our sentences. They loved it! They could read sentences and feel successful. When they were ready, we added in the words you and am, and then my and like. What I loved about this is that I had control about when to introduce the next word. 

Slowly, I continued to add more words. I added two at a time, but you could add based on your students' ability. 

I introduced questions too:

I made an entire pack of sight words and picture cards, along with a guide for the teacher. If you'd like to see more, head on over to my blog:

Using Puzzles for Sight Words

I love using puzzles to help build sight word recognition and fluency as a workstation activity! It's one of the easiest, low-prep stations I've done, and even better? My kiddos

LOVE it!

You really can't ask for better than that, can you? I mean, easy prep, effective practice, and high engagement....does it get any better?!

Check it out...

At the workstation, kiddos turn all the pieces over. Taking turns, they read the word on the back of each piece. If it's read correctly, they turn it over. As soon as ALL the pieces have been turned over, kiddos get to put the puzzle together. That's where the fluency piece comes into play: their goal is to get that puzzle put together, so they read the words as quickly as they can! Awesome!

I'd love to have you stop over at my blog to read more about this workstation -- how to get it all set up, more about storage. AND ----- there may or may not be a giveaway for you!!