Scooping Words Activity

Colleen Beck OTR/L
Colleen Beck, OTR/L is a pediatric occupational therapist and the owner and author of The OT Toolbox website. She manages all of The OT Toolbox social media accounts and runs the popular newsletter. Read about Colleen's experience and career as an occupational therapist, including how The OT Toolbox began on our About The OT Toolbox page: https://www.theottoolbox.com/about-us/ Colleen created The OT Toolbox in 2011 and since then has written thousands of blog posts designed to support therapy providers, educators, parents, counselors, admin, and caregivers in promoting the healthy development of kids. Check out Colleen's blog posts below:

This scooping words activity is a fun way to work on literacy and fluency with reading. Use this activity along with our ping pong bounce game for fine motor fun with reading! This is a multisensory learning activity kids love.

Scooping Words

Sight Words and decodable reading are something that we’ve been working on every day around here.  With Big Sister being in Kindergarten (and my oldest…so this is all new to me, too!) we’ve been going right along with the fast pace that reading, writing, and math brings home for homework every day. 
 
And not only that, I love to add fun and creative ways to supplement Big Sister’s work.  
 
This Sight Word Scooping Activity was a fun one for a little after school (and after homework) fun.  We used ping pong balls to practice a lot of her sight words but also some of her decodable words.  This activity was great for a new reader because it added in some fun while encouraging fine motor skills to the learning.   
 
 
You might have seen some of our other sight words activities that we’ve been doing recently (with string, with clothes pins, and with a scavenger hunt among the fun). 
 
Big Sister is doing so well with her new reading skills and it’s still hard for me to believe my little girl is reading!!
 

Why Use this Scooping Words Activity?

This scooping words idea builds skills in several areas:

 
 

Sight Word Scooping Activity to learn, match sight words with ping pong balls. By Sugar Aunts.

 
 
This post contains affiliate links.  
 
Sight Word Scooping Activity to learn, match sight words with ping pong balls. By Sugar Aunts.
 
We started with a set of ping pong balls, and a Mini Muffin Pan. 
 
I had written some words on the ping pong balls and had a few of them set into the mini muffin tin.  
 
Big Sister read the sentence and smiled.  She loves that she can decipher words into meaning, too!  Other ping pong balls were in a bowl ready for scooping.
 

 

Scooping Words Activity

Big Sister grabbed the Ice Cream Scoop and started scooping the ping pong balls into the muffin tin. 

She would tell me the words on the pin pong balls as she scooped.  Baby Girl had to get involved in this activity when she saw the scooping fun! 

Scooping and pouring (and scooping words) is a great fine motor activity for toddlers, so this was not only fun for her…it was also a great developmental activity!

For Big Sister, scooping the ping pong balls while making sure the words were showing was good for her fine motor work.

 
I added a handful of Mini Muffin Cupcake Liners with the same words written out on them.  They were in a random order for Big Sister to match words. 
 
She plopped a ping pong ball with the matching word into the cupcake liner.
 
 
She decided that we needed some water in the bowl to make scooping a little more fun.  She was right.  It was more fun! 
 
(Especially for Baby Girl.  She was in scooping heaven, here!)
 
 

Working on fine motor skills, visual perception, visual motor skills, sensory tolerance, handwriting, or scissor skills? Our Fine Motor Kits cover all of these areas and more.

Check out the seasonal Fine Motor Kits that kids love:

Letters Fine Motor Kit
Kit de motricidad fina de verano
Summer Fine Motor Kit
Outer Space Fine Motor Kit
Space Fine Motor Kit
Spring fine motor kit
Valentines Day fine motor kit
winter fine motor kit
Winter Fine Motor Kit

Or, grab one of our themed Fine Motor Kits to target skills with fun themes:

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