Thrifty Thursday—Words and Phonemes Dollar Store Style!

Nothing is more exciting than when you find something in the dollar store that you can use in your classroom.  Right? I think only a teacher REALLY gets the dollar store fever. I  know my husband just.doesn't.get.it! This post has several dollar store finds that I use to teach letters and words.

Here are some of my favorite ways to use dollar store finds to teach some of our literacy standards.

Spill

The first game is called spill.  Here's how you play:

• Take any container from the dollar store.
• Place several letters or words inside of the cup, 5-10.
• Pass the cup around the room as the music plays.
• When you stop the music, whoever has the container spills the contents onto the floor.
• They read the words or letters as they place them back inside the container.
• Repeat until everyone has a turn.

Overhead Words

If you don't know what this is...asking some who has been teaching a little longer than you. :)

• You might have seen overhead letters in a teacher supply catalog.
• There are never enough of the most popular letters for building words.
• I picked up these clear disks from the game section at Wal-Mart.
• They are used to play bingo.
• I wrote the letters on the disks with a sharpie.

Making Words

This is a coupon organizer. I use it to organize the letters for making words. Here's how...

• For each of the tabs in the organizer make letters labels to stick over the food category.
• Make letters using a spreadsheet so that all letters will be the same size. You will want several of each letter.
• Sort the letters behind each tab in the organizer.
• I made 6 of these for my small group.
• When the kids come to my table, I display a list of letters that I would like for them to collect. 
• They look in their organizer and collect the letters needed for the lesson.

Fly Swatter Word Building

This game helps kids blend and segment words. Here's what you do:

• Collect three flyswatters.
• Place a piece of velco on each.
• Make a set of letter cards.
• Put the opposite side of velco on the back of each letter.
• Put a letter on each flyswatter to spell a cvc word
• As the children blend the sounds, they hit each fly swatter on the table.
• As they hit the fly swatter on the table, they make the sound.
• You can also invite three kids and have each kid hold one of the fly swatters.