Here is a fun new Common Core learning center that will help your students practice the alphabet or the sight words. It is great for preschool, pre-k, kindergarten, or for first graders, too! Even better, the downloadable masters are FREE, too!
To use this activity, the children simply match the lower case letters to the upper case letters and place them on the paper to build the house. Or if you want to have your students practice sight words, they can match the sight words printed in one font to the sight words printed in another. I printed my houses on different colors of card stock and laminated them for durability. I made three different sheets with letters on them to cover the entire alphabet, but made just one set of blocks for the center.
For the blocks, I used the cheap brand of Jenga blocks that they sell at Target. I found the same thing on Amazon at this link here, but they were actually MORE expensive on Amazon! I paid about $6.89 or so at Target for my “Jumbling Tower” blocks. Amazon lists them for $9.78. Their cheapest version of the brand name Jenga goes for 12.97.
When I saw that I could get essentially the very same thing for about half the price, I quickly chose the knock off brand instead of the name brand! (I am really not sure whether or not the Jumbling Tower blocks are EXACTLY the same size as Jenga blocks!)
There were 48 blocks in the box. That is enough for 26 alphabet blocks, and some extra blocks for something else, such as sight words! I decided to make a sight word block house, as can see. 
To put the letters or words on the blocks, I used Mod Podge. My sweet daughter Kimmie helped with it! We just printed them out, adding a line underneath them in red to help eliminate any confusion regarding which side is up. However, you can always just print out some paper “blocks” if you don’t want to buy any real wooden blocks at all.
Then Kimmie cut them out, and painted a little bit of Mod Podge on each block so that the paper would stick. Then she laid each paper letter on the blocks, and painted some more Mod Podge onto the blocks to cover the paper and let them dry. When they were dry, she went back over them again and gave them another light coating, just for good measure.
Here’s another great way to help your kids learn the alphabet! Check out our Letters & Sounds DVD!
Of course, the very same thing can be done with sight words, or numbers, or just about anything else! For this Sight Word House, I deliberately wrote the sight words in two different fonts so that children would have some practice reading the words printed in different types of print. This is why I am giving you a blank master of the house as well! You have my permission to use it in your classroom and upload pictures of it, as long as you credit to me and send others here for the master rather than distributing the master yourself.
You can download the masters for the Alphabet Block House and a blank house here. This includes the lowercase letters on the house, a blank house, paper blocks, and blank paper blocks.
Click here to download the uppercase letters masters that you lay on the blocks. This download is in Word form (.doc) so that you can edit them and change the fonts, change them to numbers, or whatever you would like to do to them.
Download the masters for the Sight Word Block House and a blank one here. This includes the house with the sight words on it, a blank house, paper blocks, and blank paper blocks.
Click here to download the masters for the sight words to lay on the blocks. This download is in Word form (.doc) so that you can edit them and change the fonts, change them to numbers, or whatever you would like to do to them.
If you do something fabulous with them though, please share!!! Don’t forget – included in the download are the masters for some “paper blocks,” just in case you would like to do this without buying any blocks or doing any decoupage.
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