Learning with a muffin tin

Today the little man and I made a trip to the nearest Dollar Tree to look around.  I had a few things in mind that I wanted to pick up but it never hurts to look around the whole store, right?

While we roaming up and down the aisles, I spotted this super fun item!

Table Tennis Balls!

 

 

As soon as I spotted these, my creative light bulb switched on!  We finished looking around, made our purchase, and headed home.  I jumped on my laptop quickly and whipped these together.

 



https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByJSAT7sztfvLWVIamxWWnZVQmM/edit?usp=sharing

Click on the link and grab your own set of muffin tin letter cards.

 

 

Now on to how to play!  Before I start with the directions, let me suggest giving the owls some time to just play around with the table tennis balls to get that sort of silly play out of the way.  If they get it out of their system, you will most likely see a more productive level of work with the table tennis balls.  I placed one letter card in the bottom of each muffin tin.  I would suggest laminating for durability because they will get moved around during the game.  Each owl should have his/her own table tennis ball.  The owls should take turns GENTLY bouncing the ball into the muffin tin.  After the ball has landed, the letter should be read/identified out loud.  It takes a little while to get the hang of bouncing the ball into the tin, so you might want to say three tries and then the next owl is up. 

 

This is what it would like after a couple bounces.

 

The owls would say, "I landed on the D or I landed on the E."

 

For the beginning of the year, I will be putting the letters into the muffin tin in order.  This will allow the owls to go back and say the alphabet in order to find the letter landed on.  After some time with letter work as a whole group and with the game, I will mix the letters up to offer a challenge.

 

I just logged into my facebook page and saw that Julie Lee has a Muffin Tin product with lots of great ideas.  Please click here to head over to here TPT store!

 

 

~Erin

 

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