Ready, Aim, FIRE!

I don't know if I told y'all this already, but we're currently visiting family in Indiana.  It's shaping up to be quite the whirlwind trip. We always drive.  Every year.  And I love it.  I do.  I LOVE road trips.  SO much to see!  And y'all...'Merica is beautiful.  Anyway, our road trip driving up lasts 2 days.  It's a total of 18-19 hours for us to get here and we have to break it up into two days because, well, that's just a long time to be in the car...especially for my VERY busy little boys.

We'll be here for a few more days before heading to Michigan.  While we're here in Indiana,  I'll drive a couple of hours over to Dayton to visit my dear friends and have lunch at our annual meeting spot...Panera {4 years strong and loving it!}.  This year I'll probably stick to a salad instead of my usual carb loaded indulgences, but I digress.  We'll all drive up to Michigan and spend a few days there to celebrate the 4th.  It's seriously my favorite trip of the whole year.  I LOVE being with family and not that I'm biased, but darnit...ours is just the best!  Then Mr. Spouse and I will fly out to Vegas...from Michigan...stay for 6 days...fly back to Michigan...drive back to Indiana to pick up the boys...and then start another 2 day trek down to Texas to go home.  W-O-W.  I'm tired just thinking about it!

Anyway, yesterday we celebrated my oldest.  He turned 7.  SEVEN, y'all.  That's insane.  I remember when the doctors first laid him on my chest and I swore my heart couldn't get any bigger than it was at that very moment.  And here we are 7 years later.  I just hear the words echoing in my ears {seven, seven, seven}.  It's going by too fast.  We celebrate his birthday here in Indiana every year and every year he says, "THIS IS THE BEST BIRTHDAY EVER!!!!!"  Bless.  

In honor of his birthday, I'm throwing a sale in my little store.  Everything is 20% off today only!  I meant to do this yesterday, but we were busy making memories so I never got around to it!

Today is a down day, so I'm spending the afternoon putting the finishing touches on my presentations for I Teach 1st/K.  I'm so excited to get to Vegas and meet so many talented teachers.  Have I ever told y'all how much I love meeting people?!?!  That was my most FAVORITE thing about waiting tables.  I LOVED meeting people.  And so many of my "regulars" are still my friends to this very day :)  I digress...I'm SO excited to meet so many of  y'all!!  

While I was going through some of my slides for my presentation on sight words, I remembered this one I shared with the teachers in NC and wanted to share it with y'all, too!  

This is one of my favorite sight word games to play with my bitties.  Have y'all seen these little throw and catch sticky discs in the Dollar Spot at Target?  These are SO much fun.  And a dollar.  So that makes them that much more fun.  You definitely get what you pay for because these little suckers come apart if you're too rough with them, but overall...worth the dollar.  

Anyway, I bought several sets of these because my kids liked them so much.  I used a dry erase marker to program different sight words on each disc.  I like to play this game during our small group intervention/tutoring block on Fridays.  

Basically, you play two kids at a time.  I give both of my kids a sticky ball and have them stand behind a duct tape line.  Then I'll say, "Ready, Aim, FIRE!!!!"  The kids will throw their balls and aim for one of the discs...ANY disc.  {You'll decide how many you want to lay out}.   They'll race to see what word they landed on and the first kid to say their word correctly wins the round, earns a point, and then gets to continue play against another kiddo in the group.  

I have a set score to work towards...lets say, 10 points.  Whichever friend gets 10 points first wins the game.  I program the discs with sight words I want my kids to master.  I even repeat some of the words on the discs so they're not all different.  Just depends on the objective I'm trying to acheive!  

If you can't find these discs at your local Target, you can use paper plates.  Wad up a piece of paper....like a snowball...and let the kids throw that instead.  

I love that I can use these discs for ANYTHING.

I like to do use these for my higher order thinking activities, too.  I'll program the discs with numbers and have the kids throw the ball to a number.  Then I'll have my friends who need to be challenged call out a number sentence that is equal to the sum on which they land.  These are great for differentiation!

SO.MANY.POSSIBILITIES!!!!!

Now time to get back to work!  Have a MARVELOUS Monday, friends!