Now that Miss G is in First Grade {first grade!!} she’s given a new list of sight words to take home each week. At the moment, the expectation is that she’s able to read them aloud, but since she’s already quite advanced with her reading, we’ve been practicing spelling them too. She loves sitting down with mama to do her ‘homework’, but it goes without saying that we keep it lighthearted, hands-on, and FUN. One of our very favourite ways to do so? Practicing sight words with a salt tray!
Without a doubt, one of my most used resources in my Kindergarten and Grade One classes was the stack of coloured plastic plates filled with salt that I kept in my teacher’s cupboard. They were the simplest thing ever – literally plastic plates in a bright colour {aqua and gold always seemed to be the favourites} filled with a very thin layer of salt I’d bought at the dollar store. Despite their simplicity, we used them constantly… When practicing letter and number formation, when learning to draw shapes, when learning about different types of lines used in art, and when doing literacy and math centres… The list could go on.