Burlap Place Mats

Recently, I have gotten extremely excited to move into this house my friends and I are renting next year. It is the cutest and I've gone DIY-crazy making stuff for it.

We plan on having many family dinners at our place next year so I thought some cute place mats would add a special touch to our table. I picked up 1 yard of burlap at the local craft store. There was a crease on one side of the burlap from being folded and I wasn't sure if I could iron it. I called my wonderful Grandma who has the answers to everything and she instructed me to iron it with a thin kitchen towel on top.

Once the crease was taken care of, I cut the yard into six 12x18 inch place mats. 

My plan was to paint words on the sides of the place mats with black paint and stencils. I set up shop on my kitchen table with newspapers, acrylic paint, stencils, and the place mats. I wanted to use words relating to eating so I decided on eat, feast, dine, munch, chow, and graze. 

I started by painting the first letter with the stencils. I filled in the letters once the stencil was removed. I found these stencils at Wal-Mart for $4. They're a good size and reusable!

Since I wrote the words on both sides, I used a ruler to ensure the words were lined up and spaced correctly.

I did this same process for the rest of the place mats. I think they turned out pretty cute and I can't wait to use them next year for family dinners.

Sight Word Foam Dice

Another Dollar Tree specialty. I had some foam blocks left over from the Dollar Tree and wanted to create some sort of literacy activity. I decided I would use them for a word study station to practice sight words.

I used the green, blue, and red dice for the consonant letters.

I used the orange cubes for the vowels so they could be easily distinguished from the consonants.

Here's how the activity goes; it would probably work best in a center. Instruct your students to pick one orange dice and two others.

Then they will roll and try to make a word. If it's gibberish, roll again! In this case, I did not roll gibberish so I would form a word.

Writing down the words is a great addition to this activity. You could have your students either write down the words on a worksheet you provide in the station or in their notebook; whatever works best in your classroom!

For your students who need to be challenged, have them roll more dice.

Another way to use the dice would be to have the students use them to form words without rolling. Each student would have a pile of dice and they pick out letters they need to form words they come up with or find around the classroom.

What an easy, cheap addition to your classroom centers!