If you are looking for a fun, engaging game for your kindergarten or beginning first grade students, to help them with blending, segmenting, sound substitution and rhyming, look no further!
This delicious game is called Stacker Crackers and is made by Learning Resources. Recently, I had the pleasure of reviewing this game with my kindergarten students. I played too and we all had a blast! Not only is this game fun, but it also makes you crave cheese and crackers!
The game comes in a cute yellow box and really looks like something in my snack drawer! The box is filled with several different shaped cheese and crackers, which are very, very durable and incredibly realistic. Each shape is labeled with a CVC word. There is also a STACK ATTACK card. More on this later...
To play the game, students choose a card out of the box (without looking) and read the CVC word out loud and show the group. Then, they replace one of the sounds with a different sound to make a new word. The first several times we played, the children replaced the first sound. For example, if they chose a card with the word net, they can say set. Most of the children were able to come up with their own new word, but sometimes I gave a hint, like, change "nnnn" to "ssss". This way of playing the game is great for students who need to practice rhyming. We also played the game by changing the last sound. If the children say a new word correctly, they get to keep their cheese or cracker. If they don't, it goes in the discard pile. I used a basket to hold the discards. The object of the game is to earn as many cards as you can and make a stack of them. But you can't play with your stack because if your stack falls down, you must put all your cards in the discard pile.
Remember the STACK ATTACK card? Getting one of those is a bummer because that means you have to put your whole stack into the discard pile! These two cuties were NOT happy about that! Neither was I! I think I chose the most STACK ATTACK cards of all my students! I didn't win one game! And I played a lot of games!
Stacker Crackers is a GREAT game and I highly recommend it for every kindergarten and first grade classroom. It is best played in a small group, like at a station or during a reading group. Once every child played the game a few times, they were able to play it independently at the Word Work Station. This game is one of the most popular learning games in my classroom.
I promise you your students will love this game too! And, I bet you'll be eating way more cheese and crackers than you have ever eaten before!
Learning Resources is kind enough to allow me to give away a Stacker Crackers Sound Swap game to one of my lucky followers. Just fill out the rafflecopter below and cross your fingers. As always, there are many ways to enter this giveaway. The more you choose, the higher your chances are of winning. Please enter with integrity. All entries will be verified.
Good luck!
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