Monday Made It: Word Work Dew Drops!

Heya'll! I'm posting my Monday Made It early (4th Grade Frolics is only hosting on the second Monday of every month now that school has begun) so I will be linking up later. Here's what I made:

They are what I am calling "dew drops" for a making words activity during word work centers. I originally got this idea from 4th Grade Frolics but could not find little round alphabet stickers AN.Y.WHERE. So I had to get a little crafty. First I grabbed my trusty neon paper pack:

And got a couple bags of those clear vase fillers, or "accent gems" from the Dollar Tree.

I sorted through them to pick out the truly clear ones (some of them had a reflective sheen on them that made it more difficult to see the letters....you can skip this step but I am just that anal).

Then I traced one of them on my neon paper to create a "stencil" to quickly cut a bunch of circles in bulk. After I had all the paper circles cut, I wrote out the alphabet twice and vowels a couple more times just to be safe (I wanted there to be enough dew drops in order to allow multiple students to build words at the same time without fighting over letters).

I did not have any ModPodge so I just used regular old school glue to paste the letters onto the gems. I painted a thin layer of glue onto the bottom of the gem, stuck the letter onto the gem, and then painted over the paper and around the sides to seal everything together. Once the first layer had dried, I painted another thin layer of glue over the paper just in case. Tedious, yes. But strangely therapeutic!

Once everything is good and dry, your dew drops are ready to go! You can use these in SO many different ways. I'm going to be using them for a making words activity in my word work center. Students can either spell words they see around the classroom and on the word wall, spell their names, or copy sight word cards for extra practice.

After making their words, students complete this extension worksheet:

This worksheet is available in my Word Work pack:

And that's that for today! I'm always looking for ways to keep my word work center interesting and I just know my kiddies are going to flip over this...I hope yours will, too!