YEA! Blog

Sight words, the phrase alone is enough to make kids cry and parents desperate for an effective way to inject a little fun into an otherwise overwhelming and tedious job.  Recently my sister and nephew have been embarking on this journey themselves.  In an effort to help, the “Sight Word Munching Monsters” game was born.  My goal in creating this activity was to try and bring back the excitement my nephew first expressed at the prospect of going to kindergarten.  If you are seeking the same thing then try out our monsters game.

Materials:

• Hot glue gun
• Elmer’s glue with paint brush
• 3 pieces of scrapbooking paper (8 x 11)
• 1 scrapbooking paper block (small paper size)
• Scissors
• Copy paper (1 sheet)
• Pencil
• Ruler
• Clear shipping tape
• Markers
• 3 Plastic jars (Crystal Light works really well)
• Box cutter or Exacto Knife
• Velcro

Steps

1. Remove wrapping from the Crystal Light jars, discard lids.
2. Paint Elmer’s glue onto all sides of the jars (excluding bottoms).
3. Roll the paper onto the jars (be sure to keep the paper even with the bottom).
4. Set them aside to dry.
5. While they are drying, create the site word “crackers”.
6. Take the copy paper and create a 1” x 2” grid, cut the resulting rectangles out.
7. Write the sight words on to the “crackers” (aka the rectangles).
8. Laminate them by placing clear tape on the top and bottom and trimming each one.
9. Once the tubes are dry, cut the excess paper at the top to look like hair. (by cutting “V’s” or skinny strips.
10. Use the Exacto knife and cut  a hole into one side of the jar, make sure it is a little wider than 2”.
11. Use the smaller scrapbooking paper to add details to your monsters.
12. Create 3 circles; color one green one red and one yellow.
13. Label the green circle “go”, the Yellow “slow” and the red “woah”
14. Place the Velcro on the back of the circles; stick the other side to the plastic monster bodies.

How To Use Your Monsters:

1. Lay out the site words in front of the monsters.
2. Each monster plays a roll:
   • Woah – words needing more study time
   • Slow – words your child almost knows
   • Go – words your child knows
3. If your child gets the word right they “feed” the site word cracker to the “Go” monster
4. If they get the word right, but only after some help/clues, the site word gets fed to the “Slow” monster
5. If they get the word wrong, even with prompting, the site word gets fed to the “Woah” monster.
6. The goal of the activity is to move all of your crackers into the “Go” monster.