Last week we played a game of "football" to give us more practice with the OA and OW vowel teams. This week with opening day of baseball happening on Sunday I thought it would be fun to play a game of "baseball" with my kiddos to give them some practice with the IE and IGH vowel teams we're learning about this week.
To create the baseball field I used tape and created the baseball diamond on our carpet. I literally ran out of this green tape as I was making third base but I made due with what I had!
It's hard to see against the word wall but I put up a baseball banner much like the football banner I put up last week. The baseball banner was $4.99 at Party City... they have a ton of sports related items in store and online.
To play the game I separated the kids into two teams, the Green Spies and the Orange Knights. After separating the kids each student was given a recording sheet to write their answers on. This is important because all the kids are engaged the whole time as they are all responsible for writing the words I call out.
As I shouted out a word, each student wrote that word on their recording sheet and I went around to check each page. If each player on the team spelled the word correctly, their "batter" on the field rolled the dice. Each number on the dice corresponded to a particular hit on the field and the batter moved accordingly.
I also gave one student on each team a PomPom so he or she could be a cheerleader... we've had some interesting cheers both this week and last week! The two baseball/Yankee bears were given to each team as well to act as a team mascot!
The kids loved playing the game and at the end of day two the score is 5-5. On days three and four the kids will be using IE and IGH words in sentences to make the tasks a bit more challenging.
To get us thinking baseball before the game each day we sing the national anthem and wave our American flags... created as part of our US Symbols unit we've been working on. We also sing"Take Me Out to the Ballgame" each day to really put us in the baseball mindset.
While this was a simple room transformation and game to play it keeps the kids engaged and excited to review and use new words that we are working on. I love seeing how excited they are as they are playing together on a team with their classmates.
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