Clothespin Games

I mentioned these games when we first made them; I'm bringing them back with a couple of ideas of how to use them.

First, we have our set of clothespins numbered 1-12, and two strips of cardstock with sets of dots.  The goal is to match the clothsepin with the corresponding number of dots.  Today I gave on strip to Lily and one to Jack, piled all of the clothespins in the middle, and their goal was to find their clothespins and pin them.  Not "first"--we weren't making it a contest, and they helped each other find their clothespins.  

 
Next we took our set of alphabet letter clothsepins  and piled them in the middle of the table.  I gave each child a sight work, and he or she had to find all of their letters and pin them to the word card.  They worked together on this one, too ("I need R!  Where is R?!") and it was a fun game.  They actually kept playing for a while without me, though they like me helping to find the clothespins.

Happy with both of these games!

Magnetic Letters and Sight Words

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I'm always looking for fun ways to use our magnetic letters.  It can be great to use the fridge, but moving the letters to a roasting pan has renewed the kids' interest in them.  I used the sight word cards I'd made for the clothespin spelling game. Because we have upper and lowercase letters, the words can have up to two of the same letter in them.  The kids end up reading the word, then focusing on the individual letters, and reading the word again.  Great practice!

Spelling with Clothespins

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This is a great activity because it gives the kids a little fine motor skills practice while playing with spelling.   I made a little pile of sight words on cardstock and printed letters on clothespins.  (One of each consonant and a few of each vowel, though you really only need one of each to start.)  

At first I just had the clothespins spread out on the floor, but then I printed the alphabet on cardstock and we clipped the clothespins to that first to make them easier to find.  I think that helped a lot.


Great practice at sounding out words, identifying letters, putting them in order...and lots of fun!

Word Charts ( or Letter Bingo!!)

Letter Bingo!

We needed a little game to play in between some other activities--this ended up being a lot of fun!  We have a giant canister of foam letter stickers.  I made each child a letter chart, and their job was to fill in the whole chart.  I would call out a letter, and they would look for it!  You could also play Bingo with this.  You will be short one letter on each chart (5x5); you might want to make it the same on each one.