You clever monkey: Literacy Centre Ideas. Literacy centres continue to feature in my classroom program and I'm always on the hunt for new activities I think will engage young children in their learning.
You can see our other collections of literacy centre activities here and here.This round up of literacy centres includes activities with some key focus areas - rhyme, beginning letter sounds, CVC words, letter recognition, handwriting, sight words and developing vocabulary. As always, the activities often have other physical or social skills built in to them as well such as fine motor strengthening and learning to play cooperatively. Rhyme For older children, these CVC Rhyming Word Mats from The Printable Princess have provided great practice at writing rhyming words as the visuals help support their early attempts at writing.
War- A Math Card Game - Teaching Boys. Anything with the title “War” gets a thumbs up with my boys.
War, a common card game, has a lot of mathematic potential! War card game The Basics of War Supplies: Standard deck of playing cards with 52 cards Number of Players: Two Length of Time: 15-45 minutes (depending on level) Goal: To win all of the cards. T-Shirt Download {FREEBIE} Skip to main | skip to sidebar This Blog Linked From Here.
Common to the Core: Pool Noodle Phonics: Decoding Matters. I recently presented at a conference for my school district on the roots of reading development.
This slide is one of my favorites from the presentation. Name writing activities. It's several weeks into the school year and I haven't posted anything about my new class yet, but it's all good- they're a great bunch!
I have 11 kids and they are loads of fun and full of personality. I'm so lucky that their transition was easy, I didn't even have any criers on the first day! We've been hard at work on identifying their names, identifying the letters in their names, and getting the muscles in their hands strong enough to be ready to start writing their names. Here are some pictures of the name writing activities we've done so far this year. We started learning about names by focusing on the first letter. A Differentiated Kindergarten: Back To School Panic Time and Something That Could Help Your Own BTS Planning. I am officially in panic mode for Back To School.
When you walk into Office Max, Walmart, Target or wherever and this is what you see, it has a tendency to send chills right down even the most seasoned teacher. I’m raising my hand to say I’m in terror mode and need to get going on my ‘to-do’ list. I know none of you could possibly have this problem, but most nights I can’t see the top of my kitchen table. I have 4 or 5 or 10 projects going on at one time. Kindergarten+Journals.jpg (JPEG Image, 1143 × 1600 pixels) - Scaled (62%) Common Core Connection. Building Fact Families Awhile back, I saw a great idea from Margaret at KinderJourney.
She was using clothes pins and craft sticks to build sight words. I loved the idea because kids enjoy working with the materials and get to develop important fine motor skills while also working with academic tasks. "To develop the whole child we must develop the mathematical child." - D. Clements. I'd like to start this post by thanking Deborah Sinyard (@sinyarddeb) for sharing with me the beautiful quote above by D.
Clements. This quote struck a cord with me since some incredible mathematical learning took place in our classroom last week! Just like we encourage our students to see themselves as scientists, authors, artists, architects, and beyond we also encourage our students to think of themselves as mathematicians. Fill In The Blank Spelling with Playdough. Learning After School is our series of short but important lessons that are big on fun and reinforce skills your kids are learning at school.
They are designed not to feel like homework and if they do or if my son rates them too low ( yes he rates each and every activity we do here) I don’t post it .This simple CVC word activity lets kids explore spelling with playdough and did pass the test. I like using playdough because if you make a mistake it’s easy peasy to squish and try again. When your kids or their teachers speak about CVC words these are the type of words they are talking about consonant- vowel- consonant.
These simple three letter words are a great place to start segmenting sounds and working on connecting known consonant sounds with various vowel sounds to create new words. This works on your child’s phonological awareness and differentiation of vowel sounds which can be a very big struggle for many kids. Gather your materials.
Squish the middle letter and try again. Drooling For No Reason. So I'm sure you've all seen this idea from Pinterest. photo from Virtual Vine The great idea promoted here is that you can get an oil drip pan to use as an enormous magnetic board.
When I saw this, I was so excited! Much larger than the average magnetic board, at a much cheaper cost. Drool. Organizing Centers for the Entire Year. Recently, I've been getting tons of questions about how I organize my monthly centers so I wanted to share with you! While I prep my centers, everything is always strewn about the room. But with these ideas, I am organized in no time! Materials needed: 1" 3-ring binder with clear pouch Storage envelopes Sheet protectors Plastic baggies I slide the cover page for each month into the clear pouch of the binder to keep myself organized.
Then I put the student/parent directions in a sheet protector and the master of the recording sheet {if applicable} behind that. Bloglovin. Bloglovin. Managing Centers in Kindergarten! The topic of centers can be tricky… there are TONS of different ways to go about it, and centers look different in every classroom! I can honestly say that I have done them differently almost every year of my teaching career. I was also way too nervous to try them until about my 2nd or 3rd year of teaching… So if you haven't quite found your groove for centers yet, RELAX!!
Don't worry!! Using Centers To Create Learning Experiences. Literacy centers have always been my students’ favorite part of the day. I am always sad when I talk to teachers and they say they don’t have time for centers anymore. I realize that the pressure we are under as kindergarten teachers has increased greatly the past few years, but at the end of the day our students are still only five years old. They learn best by hands-on activities and play, which is all the more reason centers should be a staple in all kindergarten classrooms.o:p> Centers in my classroom vary depending on needs and ability levels. Little Miss Glamour Goes To Kindergarten. Between my Pandora Christmas channel playing in the morning when the kids come in and our schedule being thrown off due to the older kids being in testing, we have been SO in the holiday spirit and can't get enough of holiday {Christmas!!} Projects. {math integration} As much of a necessity as Elmer's glue is in elementary school, using it gives me hives.
The lid is clogged or they twist the whole lid and a pile of it soaks their paper...I would kiss the inventor of the gluestick. But, sometimes you just need a little more stickiness. We used sequins {ooh sparkly!} I found the ornament outline on the Family Fun website and added the lines myself to help guide the students' patterns. A Place Called Kindergarten: picture perfect math. Frame up some picture perfect math in five and ten frames. five and ten frames to teach number concepts. All of these activities have been kid tested and approved...
Decomposing Numbers with a Cute Shamrock Number Bond! Subtract It! Math Game. Itsy Bitsy Fun Blog. Numbers, Numbers, Numbers! & FREEBIES! Math Monday Number Recognition Freebie! Kindergarten Activity Bag...Sight Words Beans. I put together this activity for O(5) a few months ago to take on vacation. It was super simple to put together. Tips for Teaching Scissor Cutting Skills. Math- Addition Cups! Number Punch. Back to School. Quick Tip: Using Binders for Workstations. Math Work Stations: Get them for free! Anyone else's students showing a little too much energy lately?? Mine are. Just a tad.