Wikki Stix

What in the world are Wikki Stix? Well, they are a very versatile educational tool. :) They are fun to play with too. Basically, it's yarn covered in wax. Super simple. I bed I could figure out how to make some. Until then, a pack of 43 is available on Amazon for $7.96 here.  They are also a great teaching tool. While they can be used for many things, I'm going to talk about what I use them for. :)

I have a kindergartner who is a very phonetic reader. If you're wondering what that means, what happens is that any time Ryanne reads she sounds out every single letter before saying the word. This happens even if she just said the word in the previous sentence. She doesn't recognize the word. Her Kindergarten teacher recommended I buy these to help her. So, I did.

I went through and I cut them into thirds. Now, as she reads a book I do a guided reading type of thing with her. She reads it but I have cards with her sight words and I give her 2-3 of those cards. Anytime she comes across one of those words she has to circle it with one of these. The great thing is that these stick to the paper but they're easy to remove as well. This is what her book looks like when she does it....

Isn't that so fun? We're hoping this will help her to recognize words instead of sounding out every single one. We'll see how it goes. :)