Looking for something engaging and fun as a way to review our letters and sounds? Or review and practice any skills? You can do it with these Candy Land classroom ideas: Candy Land Letter and Sound Review! After our 26 days of ABC BOOTCAMP, we always build in a week of review for all letters and sounds. This week gives a chance to transition from ABC BOOTCAMP to Word Family Bootcamp while spending some time practicing all letters and sounds. As part of our review week, we do a classroom transformation to practice all sounds and letters in science of reading aligned way!
Welcome To Candy Land!
Here’s the premise: make a GIANT Candy Land game to practice letters and sounds, decode CVC and CVCe words, and write letters. This means we’re hitting both phonics and phonemic awareness skills with this game. And we’re working on math skills too! Ten frames, numbers, counting, addition, and subtraction!
Candyland Classroom Ideas: Making The Game
The game board is made of poster board. These are 22×28 inch poster board. Then we cut the boards in half. The pieces are taped together so they don’t move around. The rainbow on the wall are just plastic tablecloths from Walmart!
The giant game pieces are from Amazon! As are the inflatable gummy bears.
Unfortunately, neither seems to be available anymore!
How To Play Classroom Candyland
You can make game pieces from plates to look like candy, or use colored index cards or cardstock. I bought rainbow plates from Wal-Mart. I attached letters and beginning sounds pictures. This allows us to work on letter recognition, sound identification, and beginning sound identification.
Three or four kids play the game at a time. We had 1 person who was our spinner or our card chooser. This person would spin the wheel or choose a number card. The number tells the players how many spaces to move on the board. The rest of the kids use recording sheets to differentiate the skills. Students can write letters, color letters or pictures.
We spin or choose a number card. We count the spaces as the player moves. Then we identify the color you land on. We choose that color of plate or card. So you move 4 spaces, land on red so we choose a red plate. I held up the plate or card. Students identify the letter or picture. If it’s a letter on the plate or card, they say the letter and sound, and write the letter or color the letter. If it’s a picture, they identify the picture and the beginning sound. And they write the letter on their board or color the letter on the recording sheet.
The game continued until one of the players made it to the end, and they “won”! We played the game until everyone had a turn. We played for an hour, and everyone was engaged, laughing, and learning the entire time!
Our Classroom Candy Land resource includes recording sheets, decorations, detailed instructions, picture cards, and additional games and resources!
And of course, you MUST dress the part!
Candy Land Classroom Ideas: Green Screen
To celebrate our day in Candy Land, we used green screen technology to take our picture in Candy Land!
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