Sight Word and Letter Pounding

As I shared on my Facebook page, we are in the midst of a renovation project at our house converting our small, barely used office into a mudroom.  I have been doing a lot of reorganizing over the last several days and ordered a new fire safe where we can keep all our important documents in one place (will, life insurance, birth certificates, social security cards, etc).  The safe arrived yesterday (thank you, Amazon Prime) along with two pieces of styrofoam which ended up producing at least an hour of fun and learning for the boys.  We used one side of the foam for this Sight Word and Letter Pounding activity and the other side for another project I’ll share tomorrow!

I love being able to adapt one activity for both boys.  Little Brother is in the midst of learning letter names and Big Brother is working on learning several sight words…so this activity was perfectly adaptable for each child!

Here’s what you’ll need:  a piece of styrofoam, golf tees, a permanent marker, and a toy hammer (we used our mallets from this and this).  

 1.  Begin writing letters or sight words (or even numbers & shapes) on your piece of styrofoam.  I chose to do capital and lowercase letters for Little Brother.  He didn’t recognize many of them but it was an opportunity for me to work with him at identifying these letters.

 2.  Gather your mallet/hammer and golf tees.  Set the styrofoam in front of your child.  Please note:  If your styrofoam isn’t very thick, I would recommend putting a foam placemat (or some type of protection) underneath.  Our poor kitchen table has a few more indentions in it after today.  :)

 3.  Give your child the mallet/hammer and ask him/her to say each word (or letter) as they place the tee into the foam.

Psst…this is great for fine motor control as well!

 Little Brother eventually just wanted to put them in with his hands rather than pounding.

Are you interested in teaching your child how to read?  Check out my new eBook titled I Can Teach My Child to Read:  A 10-Step Guide for Parents.  You can purchase the PDF version or the Kindle version for only $3.99!