Spelling Blocks

I don't know about y'all, but "Rainy Days and Mondays always get me down"......especially when they occur at the same time!  Unfortunately that was the case in the Tangled Up Teaching classroom today.  But, alas, Pinterest had the creative juices flowing, and luckily I had the materials to try making my own Spelling Blocks.

My niece and nephew have outgrown the Duplo blocks we bought at the flea market ages ago, and rather than letting my mom throw them out, I rescued them and gave them a new home!

I have singles, doubles, triples, and quads in primary colors.  I wish I had equal amounts of each type of block, but when you get the whole lot of them from the flea market for less than 2 bucks, you can't complain.

I decided to lead with the singles since my 1st graders need help creating words.  Each block has one letter on each side, but I didn't use any particular method for choosing letters or letter placement, other than using blue blocks for vowels.  I'm hoping this helps with their understanding of consonants and vowels as well.





My first grade girls loved making words with these blocks!  We used our weekly list of sight words to help us build words.  I love this method  of building words because it is so hands on!  The girls were able to spin the blocks to find new words and play with making nonsense words.  We used to use letter cards to make words, but this will be our new go-to for practicing spelling and reading!


The other thing the girls liked was being able to pick up the word and show it off to my classroom assistant and the older student I have in my classroom.

Now is where I need your help, readers!  I am using the singles for single letter word building, and I'm considering using these for words to make sentences.  Now, I don't know what to do with the doubles, triples and quads.  I thought about writing nouns, verbs, etc on the doubles to use as a word sorting station for older students.  On the blocks I've already made, I used a permanent marker (I didn't have time to print our letters and affix them to the blocks....teachers are busy!)  Do you have any ideas so that I could interchange what I have on the bigger blocks?  Any suggestions at all?  Thanks readers!  I know you'll help me think of something fun and fabulous!!

Happy Monday everyone!