March to me means a few things…most importantly it means that spring should be arriving, but it also means St. Patty’s Day and March Madness Basketball! I love all the fun festivities that come along with St. Patty’s Day. I also like to pretend that I follow March Madness very closely, but truthfully, it’s just always on in our house this month because my hubby is obsessed with watching all the games. So, I technically also “watch” all the games…but really I only get into the reallllly exciting ones and more or less tune out the rest. 🙂
But, I do like to use the theme of basketball in my classroom, especially during the month of March because my little friends go crazy for it! The first thing I have my little friends do is actually practice making the sight words with their magnetic letters. Once they’ve done this successfully, we get to play sight word basketball!
This is one of those activities where after the first time you play it, everyday afterward your little friends will ask, “Can we play sight word basketball today??” I don’t know about you, but I’m all for any game/activity that will get my little ones excited and ready to learn each day, so though we do not do this everyday by any means, I do keep it in a frequent rotation to keep them engaged…and learning those sight words, of course!
I got the basketball “hoop” from the Target Dollar Section {of course} several years ago…you could easily use a basket of any sort- this one is just even better since it has the basketball on it! Then I have those soft mini basketballs for my little friends to use. All they do is pick up a b-ball sight word card, read it and then attempt to make a basket. That’s it! They repeat this until all the words are gone and they can’t get enough of it! When we don’t have time to fully play sight word basketball, I just use the basketball themed sight word cards to do quick checks of their sight word knowledge.
You can download the sight word cards freebie right here…hope your little readers also go wild for March Madness! {Pre-primer and Primer Dolch Words are all included!}
7 Responses
Cute, cute, cute! This is a fun way to get students to practice more with their words. Thank you for sharing your super cute freebie!
Lori
Conversations in Literacy
Love the March Madness freebie! Thank you so much! I've got a little trashcan with sports balls on it that will be PERFECT for this game!
Learning at the Teacher Table
It is a very very very cute post.really this will help the students to practice their words.i also love the game madness freebie.thanks for your post. facebook signin
graet post !thanks to share with us. My Recent Post… Scribblenauts Unlimited For Free
Hi,
This is very cool. I teach special ed and so we need a lot of repetition to retain words, but I need to keep it fun and this is perfect!! I do sometimes cover other words, can I get a copy of one that is blank that I can just use a marker and add a word or do you have an editable version on TPT. I would be willing to purchase it, if it was cheap enough 🙂
Hi Susan,
I totally get the need to keep it exciting when focusing on the same words over and over…and over again! I'm happy to send you a blank version of the file- can you just leave your email here? (or email me directly! [email protected])
Thanks!
Aylin
Thank you very much!