We are on half term break from school, the perfect time to be spending working on Ethan's sight words that he has brought home. Of course we're also looking to have some Halloween fun, and he doesn't like just reading flash cards, so we've made things a bit more spooky!
What you'll need:
- sight words on cards (these can be ones from school or a variety of words that they are struggling with, or fun Halloween themed words!)
- a box or plastic bin
- black beans
- orange spider rings
- severed finger toys (only at Halloween, right?!?)
- assorted other Halloween toys
This bin was super easy to set up with random Halloween toys that happened to be in our box of Halloween decorations, but a quick trip to the dollar store / pound shop should get you most of these things as well. The most important things to have are the spider rings and the severed fingers, because they encourage young readers to point to the letters as they are reading and sounding out the word. I think all of our reading might involve those bloody fingers from now on (just joking!)
I set the bin up in front of Ethan and asked him to choose a word. He was excited about it straight away, it's not the typical way that we do reading! He chose a word and then I asked him to pick up a severed finger, which he then put on his finger and I asked him to point to the word as he read it. He found it hilarious, but it did get him to really focus on the sounds in the word instead of just guessing.
The next time that he chose a word I asked him to pick up a spider ring and put it on any finger, which he did. I then said for him to point to the letters of the word using that finger. It was a great reminder to keep pointing and something he found fun as well. After that he suggested that he pick up one of the ghosts to read the next word, he used the pointy bit at the top of the ghost to follow along with the word that he was reading.
Once we got through all the words he was then just able to relax a little bit and play with the beans and the little toys in the sensory bin. Give him mind and his hands a bit of a rest by running the beans through them, which is really very relaxing. The feeling and the sound of the beans tapping on top of each other is a great way to unwind after reading. Now the bin is easy to set back up and I can ask Ethan to just choose a few words and one of the pointers any time we go past it and work on his sight words.
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