Winter Mini Unit

Wishing all you teachers a wonderful second semester in this new year.  Enjoy this winter freebie!!!!

Thanksgiving Freebie!

To celebrate Thanksgiving, I am making my Picture-Sentence Match pack free until Sunday night. I have so much to be thankful for, most of all these two cuties!

 

 

Wishing you all a wonderful and much deserved Thanksgiving holiday.

Click on the image for your freebie.  ENJOY!!! 

Math Freebie & More

I am sharing a sneak peek of my Winter Literacy & Math Unit that's currently in the works.  This free download is a matching activity that will be included in my finished Winter Pack.  It includes numeral ID, pictoral representations, and tallies for numbers 8-15.  I hope you find it useful. 

Please leave feedback to let me know what you think.  I would also love to hear what you would like to see included in my finished unit.  The first two people to post will receive the entire completed pack FREE!!!!  Remember to leave an email so that I can forward the finished unit.  Thanks!

 

Click the picture for your freebie.

 

Winter Math Match-Up

Expository Writing From a Different Perspective

Writing is probably my most favorite thing to teach in the whole wide world.  I love it even more when I can use it to reinforce learning in other content areas.  This is a lesson I did with my group of firsties from last year.  After learning about space, (stars in particular) I knew the next most natural step was to write about our learning.  I thought it would be fun to change it up a bit and write about stars from the perspective of a star.  I used rain as my modeled piece, which we wrote together using prior knowledge from our weather unit.  We had to practice what it meant to tell about something from that object's persepective.  I thought this would be a bit challenging, but they caught on super quickly. 

 

Next, I sent them off to create a list of words describing stars based upon what we have learned in class.  We went through the whole writing process until we had our finished pieces.  I was super excited about how they turned out.  I think their hard work paid off. 

 

Please share comments and suggestions on how this could be extended or improved.  I would also love to hear about how others incorporate nonfiction writing in fun ways.  Here's a little freebie of the starburst template that I copied onto yellow paper. Click here for the starburst writing template. 



Why Play?

I wanted to share this poem I found on the NAEYC website.  It does such a great job of explaining why learning through play is so important in the early years. 

Play Today?
 

You say you love your children,
And are concerned they learn today?
So am I—that’s why I’m providing
A variety of kinds of play.
 

You’re asking me the value
Of blocks and other such play?
Your children are solving problems.
They will use that skill everyday.
 

You’re asking what’s the value
Of having your children play?
Your daughter’s creating a tower;
She may be a builder someday.
 

You’re saying you don’t want your son
To play in that “sissy” way?
He’s learning to cuddle a doll;
He may be a father someday.
 

You’re questioning the interest centers;
They just look like useless play?
Your children are making choices;
They’ll be on their own someday.
 

You’re worried your children aren’t learning;
And later they’ll have to pay?
They’re learning a pattern for learning;
For they’ll be learners always.

 

—Beth Brooks,
Director,
Inova Fairfax Hospital Child Care Center,
Falls Church, Virginia

 

The poem “Play Today?” originally appeared in Ideas That Work with Young Children, Vol. 2, edited by Leah Adams and Betty Garlick, published by NAEYC in 1979.

Phonemic Awareness & Word Work

I am always thinking about how I can trick my kinders into learning a concept by making it seem like a game.  We all know we learn best when an activity is fun.  That's the foundation of this whole blog.  Don't you early childhood teachers just love to be told that it must be so much fun to teach little ones?  You know, because we just play and have fun all day.  My response is two-fold:

 

1) Absolutely!  Teaching little ones is incredibly rewarding.  They are so excited about the learning process and want to please the teacher oh so badly.  Not to mention the enormous growth that occurs during these years. 

2) There is a lot of play involved.  Here's the catcher though.  All that play took a lot of work to think-up, create, laminate, cut, glue, included atleast 2 visits to Dollar tree or Target.  All this to make the learning standard look like a game to an unassuming five-year-old.  Some may call it deception.  Us early childhood teachers call it hands-on instruction and skill reinforcement. 

 

Here are a couple of activities that I have been using this year. 

 

This is a beginning sound sort that my kids love, love love.  The chip & dip tray came from good ole Dollar Tree and I use the Lakeshore letter tub objects.  When we began I only used two letters sounds and gradually built up to four.  The middle compartment is used to place objects with a beginning sound that is not represented in any of the four larger compartments. 

 

 

 

 

   This is from my Sight Word Make-It Station.  Kiddos pull a sight word, read it, build it with magnetic letters, and write it with a dry-erase marker.  The cookie sheet came from Dollar Tree and my letters were purchased from Lakeshore.  I actually have a class set of cookie sheets and letters because it was a great way to practice spelling words in first and second grade.  This year in kinder, I introduced it in a small group and then made it a partner activity in stations. 

 Click here to find it at my TPT store. 

You will find three separate Make-It Stations specific to grades K, 1, & 2. 

I would love to hear your feedback on this product.

 

 

Fall Into Autumn, Not Drugs!

My awesome kinder team wanted to combine our love of all things Fall with Red Ribbon Week.  This is the result.  I think it turned our pretty stinkin' cute.  That adorable scarecrow is the work of the oh so talented Ms. Rousse.