I’m really having fun creating sports-themed activities. It’s kind of funny that I haven’t yet created a single activity for my all-time favorite sport, tennis, and only one for my second all-time favorite sport- soccer. I’m trying to keep with the sports season and it seems like baseball is it for the spring. Baseball really wasn’t big in my family. The kids played in our recreational league as young children and only lasted a few summers. We found it, oh should I really say it?–deep breath–kind of boring. Okay, please no hate comments from baseball fans. I will say, however, that one of my favorite family pictures was taken at the ball field.
Oh my gosh, this picture was literally taken 13 years ago! Two of those little kiddos are in college now and I’ll be shopping for a prom dress with the other little one this coming week. Time really does fly by.
I know there are many little baseball fans out there and spring sign up for baseball leagues is just around the corner. So, for my first grade friends I made this baseball themed freebie for practicing common vowel teams.
The game is quick and easy to assemble. First you’ll need to print the game boards. There are 4 different game boards with words containing common vowel teams.
Click the following link to download the game boards Vowel Team Baseball
Now you’ll need to write the vowel teams on a wooden cube using a black fine point Sharpie marker. Draw a star on the remaining two sides. You can purchase the cubes at any craft store or at a store such as Walmart.
Now you’ll need about 20 markers for each student. You can use bingo chips of course, but I like to use these mini erasers that I purchased at Oriental Trading to go along with the theme of the activity.
To play the game, the first player rolls the die and reads a word from the row of the vowel team rolled. So, for example, if the player rolled “ee” he/she would read the word “peel” from his board. A marker is then placed over the word. The next player rolls the die, reads a word, and places a marker on the word. If a row is filled with markers and a player rolls that vowel team, he/she must skip a turn. If a star is rolled, the player can read a word from any row. The player to fill his/her board first wins the game. No worries, when you download the game board, I’ve included the directions for you.
For all the baseball fans–have an exciting baseball season.
Enjoy!
This sounds like a great activity to work with students on vowel teams! I have a strong passion for baseball, and feel like I could use this activity with all of my students! Thank you so much for the useful activity and I look forward to many more activities in the future!