Let’s go to Target for diapers he said. Diapers. And you leave with $193 worth of stuff and no diapers. Ya’ll know. But at least the Target Dollar Spot has some great tools for DIY centers and games and activities for the classroom. And ya’ll know we love some DIY projects! So here’s what we came up with using our Target finds.
Working With Letters
Target has some letter erasers and some letter tiles so we grabbed those to use for letter recognition games, letter sorts, and letter formation practice!
Use letter cards to make a letter sort. We used the erasers and tiles for this sort. You can also use any letter manipulatives you have! Sorting is a great higher-order thinking skill for our kids and the visual discrimination of the letters is a key piece of the reading puzzle!
Letter recognition can be as simple as matching the letters to an alphabet chart or finding the letters and coloring the letters. Check out our freebies page for these letter charts and some different alphabet charts to use!
Another piece of the reading and writing puzzle is proper letter formation. I saw this first hand with virtual teaching. The lack of explicit instruction, modeling and practice with proper letter formation had a noticeable impact on my students writing. I’ve been working to add more handwriting activities to our centers and small groups and this is perfect. Students choose a letter eraser, say the letter and sound, and write the uppercase and lowercase letter!
Another idea for the erasers and tiles is to have students put the letters in ABC order!
You can also check out our Letter Sorts creation for more letter sorting resources for your classroom!
Sight Words And Word Work
You can use sight word cards for building sight words or high-frequency words! Students say the word and spell the word. You can also have them write the word. This same idea could be used for any type of word-building activity. For this activity, we used our Colorful Sight Word Cards!
Some more ideas for the tile is name building, spelling words, matching uppercase and lowercase letters!
Numbers And Counting
Target also has number erasers this year so we grabbed a few bags of those for math centers and small group math lessons!
For this math center (or small group activity) students identify the number and count the correct number of manipulatives. I used these rainbow mini-erasers because that’s what I had at home but you can use any manipulative or counter. When you get to teen numbers, this is great practice with teen numbers and understanding how ten teen numbers work!
This counting activity uses these beach ball plates. These are found in the summer section of Target. I used a Sharpie to make the dots. Studetns count the dots and place the number eraser on the plate!
Paper plate counting is a staple resource in our classroom. These rainbow plates are also in the summer section. I used a dot sticker to number the plates and students simply identify the number and count the correct number of manipulatives onto the plate. You can also add a ten-frame recording sheet so they can write the number and make a ten frame! You can grab a free ten-frame recording sheet on our freebies page!
Addition, Place Value, Decomposing Numbers
To make this addition activity I cut the beach ball plates apart and students use the different colors to practice addition.
The rainbow plate just screams decomposing numbers. I used dot stickers to number the plates. Students put the counters on the top of the rainbow and decompose the number by moving the counters into the clouds. They can then write the equation or fill in a number bond! This could also be a making 10 activity!
This decomposing activity is great for decomposing teen numbers into ten and some more.
Make sure to visit the FREEBIES PAGE for free recording sheets!
For more ideas and inspiration, check out these posts:
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7 comments
I I found the same things at Target, bought them but wasn’t sure how I was going to use them. Thank you for the ideas. I love the plates too, I may need to go back and get them too.
I I live almost 2 hours from Target so thanks for pre-loading my cart so I’m prepared! You guys are THE BEST! Thanks again
Oh my goodness….like I need another excuse to shop in the Target Bullseye’s Playground, i.e. the Teacher Trap!! ;-). **wink, wink**. I love these ideas and hope that my Target gets the rainbow erasers!!
My own kiddos figured out that you can use the letter puzzle pieces to create a die. 🤯 Roll the die, say the sound and letter name and then practice writing the letter. It was great fun this morning for my son who’s getting ready to start kindergarten in August. Thanks for sharing your finds and ideas!
What a great idea – I didn’t think to make them into cubes! Thanks, Heidi!
Thank you so much for sharing your ideas for teaching math and letter recognition. At the beginning of the year, I need ideas of what activities to do to help students recognize and learn their letters. These are great ideas to help them learn their letters! Also, I love the paper plate ideas with breaking apart teen numbers into a group of ten and extra ones. We work on this a lot, and this is a great hands-on way for them to learn the concept.
Cute and amazing ideas!