Word Stretchers

For the past 13 summers I've happily gone to Lakeshore Learning, in St. Louis Park, MN, to spend my hard-earned money on things I and my classroom have needed.  Over the years, I've spent less money there because I felt confident of the things I had in my classroom and didn't need as much new stuff.  Since I moved up to Alaska 8 years ago, this is my yearly pilgrimage and I keep a running list all year of the things I'm going to look for.  But of course I get in there and it's overload because there is SO much stuff to look at and drool over.  I stick to my list (and my budget) and get the things I need (stickers, borders, etc.).  But I always find something, usually a game, that I must have!  I make a lot of my reading and math games, so when I find something it's really a treasure.  This summer I found two things.  One was a short vowel sorting box game and the other was something called Word Stretchers.  Three thoughts crossed my mind upon picking up the Word Stretchers box: #1. AIMSWeb....phonemic segmenting task, #2. I could totally make that, #3  What a simple idea that somebody came up with and is now making tons of money on!  So I decided to make some word stretchers that I can use in small reading and RTI groups to help kiddos differentiate (aurally and visually) all the sounds in a word. 

I went to JoAnn's (another store I can't live without as a teacher) and purchased the following supplies:

I purposely purchased letters that have
the vowels in different colors.

 It took me 10 minutes to make one stretcher, my prototype.

Here are the steps I followed:

Cut a 12" length and singed the edges.

Wrapped .5" around the loop.

Sewed a tight zigzag stitch across, close to the loop.

I glued 3 round magnets, spaced, in the center.

And voila:

I plan on making 4 more, for a small group of 5 and know it won't take me as long since I've got the hang of it.  The only thing I'm disappointed with is the fact that the magnetic letters kind of tilt.  I bought good magnetic letters, so maybe it's the magnetic dots.

What do you think of this Word Stretcher?