Gotcha!

Today is my last day of summer "break" :|

I've spent the last week setting up hands-on centers for my new students. One treasure I discovered was this awesome center from Reagan Tunstall: Sight Word Stick Centers!

It was perfect because I just happened to have 4 bags (why?!) of craft sticks in my teacher junk storage box. The center comes with 10 game ideas and recording sheets...all for $3.50 = FANTASTIC deal! The centers are intended to be used with the regular size sticks, but I had the jumbo size & they still worked fine with only minimal overlapping.

My original plan was to use the sticks for Fry words,

but with 4 bags - the possibilities are endless!

Here's what I've come up with so far:

GOTCHA! - this is the classic game my students already know. At my school we cover the first 200 Fry words in Kindergarten and the second 200 in 1st grade. As a special educator in 1st, I work with all 400 words! The tricky part was color-coordinating the words in groups of 25. Luckily I also had an extensive Sharpie marker collection in the box :)

I was trying to come up with a clever phrase
with words #200-250, but just couldn't!

I also had colored sticks, so I came up with some holiday games:

The red & green is Ho Ho Ho! using math facts and the Boo! game is for CVC versus CVCe words. BTW - I don't recommend purchasing the colored sticks. They're cute, but the quality wasn't consistent and they were hard to write on!

I work in two classrooms and was thinking of using numbers for a classroom management system, but will most likely use the standard popsicle sticks method. I will be working in a yellow (table & chairs) room and a red room, so these will be perfect:

I found these pencil holders for $1.00 @ Target!

Does everyone know the "trick" for choosing student names? It's not really a trick, but more of a manipulation :)  Put a smaller cup inside the pencil holder, i.e.: I use one of those small clear Chinette cups I had leftover from a party. The sticks go into the clear cup (students can't see it) and you can slyly manipulate which names you pull by placing sticks inside or outside the inner cup. I can't think of too many reasons to do that, but it works if you want to choose specific names (or not)!

I was saving my favorite for last...

I ♥ these and thinking of setting up a game of "Roar!"

Enjoy & please check out the Stick Centers!