Hidden pictures... I mean sight words!!!

  You must run on over to 1st Grade Learning Stars ASAP! She has come up with adorable and engaging Sight Word Hidden Pictures. If you scroll down you'll find several that she has posted with in the last week or so and they are all super fun. Right now she is working on holiday themed ones and I find myself anticipating what comes next. Here is a screen shot of one of her creations (she also does colored ones) and of COURSE they are free!

 


 Okay, okay, I think after this week I'll have sight words off my brain! I just am not too thrilled with our upcoming math units and I feel more inspired by sight words currently. Haha, sorry for the overload!

Chalk Talk...

 April over at Chalk Talk is "calling all bloggers" to post on her site. She has a great blog roll that keeps up with all the latest posts from some fantabulous blogs. Soooo head on over there, leave a comment with your blog address, and take a look at some of the great ones she already has up. This will help my blog-stalking skills since I will only have to go to one area to find you all.... just kidding.... that's creepy... but really I'm semi serious...  I'd love to find some new blogs to follow!!!

Sight Word City (fluency with sight words)

 Let me paint you a picture.... so about 7 of my munchkins need work on reading sight words more fluently in their reading. They get to sight words they know but it takes them a moment or two to remember it, this not only slows down their reading rate but also on their comprehension because they are taking so long to remember SO many words!

  Okay, you have that picture? Well let me paint you another... I get out my regular worksheet that has many sight words written in lines something similar to this:

  the   little   go   said    little    she   the   said

    Now imagine me tapping the table to get So-and-So's attention long enough to explain reading these lines, but then by the time I get her attention Mr-wiggly-legs has fallen out of his chair, and I am still on the part of the directions to write their name! Yup... this IS kindergarten!

  Problem? Children who are not engaged and excited to learn... solution... disguising sight word fluency practice within a game! VIOLA... Sight Word City is born! Kids drive their fingers around the board any which way they choose and read the sight words, and they need to drive all over town and back again and again and again and again! You get the jist :) I hope you enjoy and THANKS to my AWESOME followers who keep motivating me and giving me such kind feedback.

Download Sight Word City

Are you ready for some football???

Actually I'm not since I am looking forward to Summer rather than Fall at the moment... but moving on! This game involves students picking two game pieces, writing the two digit number it forms, then switching the cards and writing the inverse of the number, and last figuring out which one is greater.

This is the game board for the pieces to be played on.

This is one of the pages filled with the game pieces. There are helmets and jerseys. I will have my kids play where they pick one of each.

This is the recording sheet where students write the helmet number then jersey number first, then switch them and write the inverse. For example: 24 and 42, and they have to circle the bigger number.

Download Football Smash and Switch

hmm a tad bit girlie...

I bought some clipart from Just So Scrappy Too and I can't seem to stop myself from making things!!! Actually this works out well for me because I wanted to do absolutely NOTHING this weekend but sit around and relax... yes making things for school is relaxing for me. Anyways... this one just popped into my head, we'll see how it works once I test it out on the kiddos!

   Okay so how I envision this is printing a couple pages of the necklace ribbon, laminating, and cutting it out... including the white space in the middle of the necklace. Probably taping it down to a couple Dollar Tree cookie sheets (see I told you DT was teacher gold). Then laminating, cutting, and magnetizing all the jewels. The munchkins will then have to use the jewels to create a necklace sentence and record it on the sheet. If I know my students I am sure they will have some great sentences but also some completely mixed up silly ones. The way I look at it is, if they can read it, they are practicing their sight words and reading, and they are having fun... then I have no problem with this sentence: "the my is look cat". Hahaha



 

Download Sight Word Necklace Sentences

Sight Word Garden

 So apparently I am obsessed with sight words right now, but so many cute ideas keep popping into my head I can't stop! This one students build a garden scene (we are learning about plants soon) using flowers, rainbows, clouds, mushrooms, mud, etc. all with sight words on them. After they record on their own sheet. So for all the pieces and background I'll print in color and laminate, and then the recording sheet will be black and white. ProTeacher gave so other fun ideas for this activity such as sight word sandwich and sight word pizzas.... Any bloggers care to weigh in on what should be my next one I make?? Not that I have many followers but if you give me a cool idea I'll link it to your blog for you if I make it :)

Download Sight Word Garden

(P.S. there are several pages of garden items, not just that single on)

Sight Word Sundaes

This mightttttt be my most favorite thing I have made so far!!! So I downloaded some clipart from Just So Scrappy Too, and found these super cute ice cream pieces. I am doing a pretty big push for sight words in my room right now so I create a sight word game. My students will be building ice cream sundaes with different flavor scoops, toppings, etc that each have their own sight word. Then after they build it they record the words they used! I have a feeling they will love it... I hope... we'll see...

 

 Download Sight Word Sundae

Math Planning

  A lovely follower asked to see my math planning sheet, so here goes! First off I want to add a disclaimer, I found this outline of a planning page on a teacher message board and adapted it and changed it to better suit my needs. I tried searching and searching ProTeacher but could not find the original poster, so if you happen to know where the original came from I'd love to give credit where it is due!

1) At the top I label what unit we are one and I write in which students are in which group.

2) Where it says Whole Group Plan, on Mondays I usually do whole group math because that is when we start our units. Then Tuesday - Friday that is my mini lesson for math.

3) Okay follow along, I will try to make this uncomplicated! Each day I see two of the four groups, and my TA sees the other two groups that I don't meet with on any given day. So across where it says "Teacher" I write what activity I am doing with my two groups, hence why a single box is divided into 2 parts. Same goes for the T.A. row. The tiny boxes within each larger is box is where I write which group I am meeting with: LL-low/low   ML - mid/low and so on and so forth. 

4) Whatever games I teach for the week that would make sense to go into the math independent area, I write down at the bottom so I know which games to get prepped and ready. For example, I taught an addition game with number dice and dot dice last week and this week, and for several weeks, that game will go on our math independent game shelf. 

5) Speaking of independent math game choices: whenever a group isn't with me or my TA they are playing math games. Most games are independent, but some require a friend. I rotate the games in and out based on how well they are doing with a given skill, if a game tends to hold their attention, or if it isn't being used I take it out.

     I think this is as much as I can write out, sometimes seeing it is better! Ask around your county to see if anyone you know does groups for math! IT IS WONDERFUL!!!! I can teach completely different math lessons based on what groups I have and NONE of my kids are ever bored during math.... EVER!

 Download Planning Page

First Linky Party!

Rowdy in first grade caught my attention this morning... not only because my students have been rowdy in anticipation for spring break, but also because the title of her linky party:

 Ten Things I've Learned From Teaching   so here goes!


1. Daily 5 is capital A - mazing! It allows me to reallyyyy know my students holistically in their language arts. If you haven't read up on this... do it... asap... seriously...

2. I don't have to teach for 10 years to be considered a great teacher.

3. Students will tell you things that break your heart and for the most part you can only do so much :(

4. Parents: your kids are going to tell us those embarrassing things that you told them not to tell us... oh yeah and they'll tell us you said not to tell us hahahaha

5. It is possible to teach kindergarten, get to work at 6:40am every day, and not drink ANY caffeine! I do it everyday ya'll and I sleep like a baby.

6. My math rotation setup is won-der-ful! I see two groups a day of only 4 kids each, my TA sees the other 2 groups on the same day, then the next day we switch groups. When they aren't with us they are in math independent game choices, which is awesome because all those games you created don't just get put away a week later but instead they can stay out for weeks and weeks! LOVE! I have a planning sheet if your interested.

7. If you don't teach/tell/model exactly how you want a 5 year old to do something, they'll invent veryyyyyy creative ways to do it.

8. I don't always have to buy something, I can make it!

9. Blogging resources makes me feel good!

10. GoodWill, Ikea, and Dollar Tree = teacher gold


  Head over to Rowdy in First to Link up ya'll to tell us your teacher top 10!

Plants, Plants, Plants!

1) Download Types of Plants

     This writing is for my plant unit after we sort different pictures of plants ( thank goodness lots of teachers in my school have a green thumb and save their planting magazines... I have what you might call a black and dried up thumb ). Then they go and write down food plants, flower plants, and other (i.e. clovers, grass, trees, etc)

2) Download Seed Travel Writing

       After learning and discussing how seeds travel and are spread, the children can write their own silly or serious story about if they were a seed. One side is for pictures and the other side is for writing. Although it seems like pure common sense now, a colleague of mine recommended to me to split my class during writing time. I have 14 of them work on their pictures for the first 10 minutes while I am working with 4 of my extremely dependent children on the writing part. Then after the 10 minutes we switch and the rest of the class can write while I circulate to help them. WOW seems so obvious now that I am doing it, and I'm sure LOTS of you are reading this going, duhhh, but hey, writing isn't my strong suit :) .

3) Download Spring Walk

        We are fortunate at my school to have a wonderful nature trail behind our school that we can utilize. So tomorrow my students will make predictions about which signs of spring they think they will see while we go on our walk. Then like true 6 year old scientists we'll take our clipboards, writing, and pencils outside to check our predictions. Kids LOVE going out into nature and it's fun to hear them use words like buds, blossoms, insects, deciduous trees, etc.

I'll Huff.. and I'll Puff... and I'll SPELL!!!

This time of the year is so exciting in Kindergarten... I actually ENJOY assessing them! Lately my class has really been stellar at spelling and hearing medial vowels, so I figured the would enjoy this independent activity for Daily 5 Word Work. Okay so the low down:

1) Child picks a straw pig, stick pig, and brick pig
2) Places them on their house mat and tries to read the word
3) If it is a real word they record it on the recording paper
4) Continue to play until you have filled in the recording sheet


   Word of caution, there are some digraphs and affricate sounds on some of the straw pigs, but all the stick pigs are short vowels! Hope your kiddos enjoy this as much as I suspect my munchkins will!

Download House Mat and Recording Sheet

 Download Pigs for Spelling

Daily 5: Work on Writing

 Hi All! Yes I have had a spare minute or two to breathe.... and even a few minutes to create some new things! So if any of you do Daily 5 (if you don't get the book, seriously) you know how wonderful it is that you don't have to prepare new literacy stations each week. But I will say every several weeks I like to rotate things out and put in new things and that includes the word on writing area. So far my kiddos have worked on handwriting books, magna doodles, whiteboards, writing lists, copying word walls, and labeling coloring pages. Where to go next? Oh yeah... writing! At this point in the year they are finally ready to create their own sentences, sound them out, apply spacing, and even some punctuation! Now for the writing paper....

  I made some pretty standard writing papers but I applied fun pictures that would get their creative juices flowing. I thought about the things that seem popular this year in my class and put those things in the picture area of the writing paper and they can write non fiction or fiction along with it. The pictures include:

- My Little Ponies             - Dinosaurs                   - Leprechaun
- Frogs                              - Birthday cake             - Beach
- Toy Story                       - Batman                       - Easter bunny
- Mickey Mouse               - Soccer


  Let me know about if there are any pictures you'd like substituted in! Thanks for the feedback ya'll it's helps me to know that others enjoy all these resources!

 

Download Writing Picture Prompts

Donors Choose

  Oh good you've heard about it.... and wait.... a couple of you haven't?!? Oh gosh! Welcome to the world of extremely kind strangers and companies who care! Essentially here is the jist:

1) Teacher wants something
2) Teacher writes up short project on donorschoose.org in their simple to use format
3) Teacher posts the project and waits up to 4 months for the money to start rolling in
4) Donors (can be individual or companies) go on donorschoose.org and either donate money to a randomly selected project or they read through them to find one that hits home for them
5) When the right amount of money is donated, the items are shipped to your classroom and you write a thank you package


  This cycle has been completed for me now 4 times! I have a document camera, a rug, and the latest project that got funded for me is a Califone Card Reader! I love technology and although some pieces are old and outdated, I feel that this one is still relevant and usable. With the card reader I also will receive a couple hundred blank cards so I can record sight words for my kids to practice at Daily 5 (language arts), but I could also order pre-recorded cards with pictures and words for students to learn as well. Think cards with time, money, science, etc. ANDDDDD get this... the kids can record on the card as well without recording over the teacher or automated voice! Ah so neat! I can't wait for it to arrive.



 Check out the video if you are curious about this

   or

 Click here to get started on donors choose so the envy can stop :)

Ask and you shall receive!

Meadowt- I'm glad you enjoyed these sentence picture matching worksheets! I made 3 more for you. The hardest part about them is coming up with mostly decodable sentences, so if you want more feel free to send some sentences my way!

Enjoy!!!



Download Picture Matching Sentence 2

Dear Blog.. I miss you!

    I sadly I have missed blogging and even feel guilty at times when I don't post everyday. I will not be posting anything until MONDAY!!! CRAZY! Just thought I'd let any of you who visit everyday know, so that way you can blog-stalk some of the other fantastic blogs out there...


 give 1stgradelearningstars.blogspot.com a gander!

Magnified Sight Words

 I have seen quite a few blog postings out there that have their buckaroos using magnifying glasses to find sight words. I thought to myself hmmm.... perhaps this is too advanced for Kindergarten since they are suppose to have large clear print. Well I went against my gut and... wow... was I glad I did! THEY LOVEDDDDD doing this before their reading groups!!! For those of you who haven't seen this activity before, you give each student a magnifying glass, a list of words that are TEENNYYY TINNNYYYY and have them search for sight words they can read, then they record them, and then read down the list of words they wrote. Don't forget the last part because students can copy words just fine, it's the reading where they get the practice.

  I made my using PAWS lists 1 - 10 if any of you use these, if not, any sight word practice is good practice regardless of which list you prefer. Then I will laminate them and have students use vis-a-vis to record them. Obviously you could print these black and white on paper and students could take them home, but I am thinking about putting these in my word work or work on writing bins for Daily 5.

 Disclaimer: I haven't tried printing these yet so I do not know if they are too small yet, I'll let you know tomorrow if they are okay or not!

Download PAWS Sight Word Magnifying Glass

Pot of Gold Addition

  The jist of the game: find the rainbow with the correct answer for each addition problem
 
  All the pieces:
         1) Four pages of addition problems with blank white rainbows to show where the answers should go
         2) One page of rainbows to laminate and cut and have students match to the pots of gold
         3) For your kiddos who need manipulatives to figure out the answers, you can laminate and cut these gold coins for them to use as they add.


     I'm thinking this game is pretty self explanatory, but please feel free to leave questions and of course, like a 5 year, who doesn't like positive feedback?? :)

Download Pot of Gold Addition

Addition using Fingers

  Obviously Kindergarten shouldn't be jam packed with worksheets, but I have found that with the right worksheet you can make a really meaningful activity! I wanted to help my less experienced math kiddos learn how to add using fingers as a strategy so I created this worksheet that we can use while practicing this strategy. Before the kids hold up their fingers I have them color in the right amount of fingers on the paper first. Then they figure out the answer with their physical fingers. The last two problems are to try counting on using fingers. So they only hold up the second number of fingers and count from the first number.


Download Finger Addition

No tricks up my sleeves... plenty in my hat!

  If a particular content unit isn't striking my fancy to create a math game out of, I go to the next best thing.... what my students are obsessed with! This year I have quite a few munchkins who are very into magic so I made a basic addition game with a magical twist!

Pieces:
  - 24 hats with numbers on it
  - 2 different kind of recording sheets (high / low)


Ways to play:
  I will be prefacing this lesson/game by talking about how magician's are known to pull some pretty cool things out of their hats, especially cute little while rabbits. Originally in this document I included like 30 mini white rabbits as manipulatives, but then I thought hmmmm Kindergarten... this could be too much! Hats, rabbits, recording, ahhh! For you all if your kiddos can handle it feel free to just dye cut a bunch of white circles and tell your kids they are white rabbits.
  So the game starts with a student picking out 2 hats (you could print in color and laminate, or you could print black and white and they could glue the actual hats down) and figuring out the answer. For my students who rely heavily on drawing a picture to find the answer I would use the recording sheet where they have room to draw as well as record their answer. For your students who are ready for non count by one strategies they can use the recording sheet that just asks them to write the addition sentence.

 

 Happy magical addition!

Download Magic Hat Addition

Counting on Addition dice

  We are getting ready to start our unit on addition, so be prepared for my blog to be addition overload!!! This week for some of my math groups I will be teaching them how to count on when adding. To do this they will roll a number die and record it, then roll a dot die and record it, and lastly they count on from the number die to find the answer. For the first 4 rows they also have to write in the missing symbol from the addition sentence and in the last 2 they have to write the entire thing.

   Download Addition Dice

Sentence Picture Matching

Deja vu? Perhaps! A couple posts down I did a similar activity where children were sounding out words and coloring the pictures that match. Well skill was only necessary for about 3 of my kiddos. Another handful of them really need practice with whole sentence reading and comprehension.... sooooo "Sentence Picture Matching" was born! There are three pages for this one, but I can gladly make more if you add a comment with sentences below.

   Download Sentence Picture Matching

One Fish Number Writing

Last minute I know! But you can use it next year if you'd like. Tomorrow is One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish Day and the kids are all wearing clothes with numbers on them (i.e. jerseys). We will go on a number hunt and record some of the numbers we find and this resource is what we will be using. Enjoy!

Download One Fish Number Writing TShirts