I hope everyone has been enjoying the beginning of the new school year. I apologize for being away. However, I am now 4 months pregnant and expecting my first baby in the Spring!

I will still try and post periodically but I have been exhausted!

Rhyming words/word family printable (ignore the color words labled on each page)

Weekend graph

Ideas from Hubbard’s Cupboard

Coconut Tree Coloring Page

CCBB PowerPoint

CCBB Arm and Hand Painting:Paint the student’s hand green and part of their arm brown. Press their hand and arm on a large peice of paper, this will make a coconut tree print. Add letter sticks, foam letters, or have the students use letter stamps on their painting after it had dried.

CCBB Letter Match: I made a large coconut tree out of construction paper and wrote all the lower case letters on the tree. I then made 26 brown coconuts and wrote the upper case letters on them. After laminating everything the students place the coconut letters on top of the coconut tree.

KidzClub Retelling Pieces

Alphabet Action Game

Clean and oragnize the media room closet

Read more: I recently finished The Last Lecture and started The Five People You Meet in Heaven. So far I reccomend both books.

Clean out and organize scrapbooking materials

Clean 2 bedroom drawers

Clean out and donate clothes I took all the clothes out of my closet today and sorted through them. I placed all the clothing that I have not used in a while in garbage bags. I am going to call someone this week to come pick them up or drop them off somewhere. A lot of the things I got ride of are still very nice and I hope someone who can really use them finds them…

Ideas from the Virtual Vine

Today I was working on my kindergarten sub binder for next year in an attempt to be organized! I cam across an article about a substitute kindergarten teacher. I found it humorous and it gave me some prospective… Enjoy!

Reading raccoon coloring page/clip art

Ideas from Teaching Heart

Characters and props for retelling

Puppets and drawing activity from the publisher

Tons of ideas from The Virtual Vine

Raccoon Heart Craft

The Kissing Hand number match game

Racoon Cut and Paste

Sight Word Puzzles

Color Word Stamping

Number Flip Book

Dot to Dot

Dr. Seuss/ Read Across America Day Printable Book

Dr.Seuss’ Birthday Cut-Up Sentence Activity

Printable Hat from Hubbard’s Cupboard

Information on Read Across America Day

Certificate of Participation

Biography of Dr. Seuss

Smaller Hats

Printable Feet for The Foot Book

Printables by Book by Apples for the Teacher 

Check out Mrs. Keenan’s AWESOME site!

Monthly Centers from Kelly’s Kindergarten

DLTK’s Sequencing Peices

More DLTK Pieces

The Very Hungry Caterpillar “movie”

Another “movie”

Printable Booklet from Hubbard’s Cupboard

Making Learning Fun Cut and Paste Caterpillar

Making Learning Fun Cut and Paste Butterfly

Making Learning Fun True/False Cards (counting)

Making Learning Fun Upper and Lower Case Match

Making Learning Fun Days of the Week Flip Book

Teacher Vision Activity Booklet

Number and Sets Puzzles

More Sequencing Cards

Other ideas…

Coloring page from Eric Carle

Picture/Sound match

I have been thinking about next year. Already you ask? Yes, because that is just how I am! I plan ahead in my head and my website is just one way to get out all the ideas and actually organize my thoughts. In the process I thought it could help some other teachers as well.

Tips for home from Little Giraffes

ABC (items to glue on each letter) Projects from Giggle Potz

Ideas for sorting letters (some examples)

Sorting by color (magnetic letters)

Locating a particular letter and sorting them from the rest of the group

Sorting by upper and lower case

Letters with sticks vs. letters without sticks

Letters with circles vs letters without circles

Awesome ideas from the Florida Center for Reading Research

Font Box Letter Sorting For this center the teacher would decide ahead of time which letters the students will be looking for. The teacher will then write or type the letters on the top of the graph. I left the graph in a Word document so that it can be changed to meet the needs of individual students. The students then search the font box for the letters they are looking for. The font box is any old box with papers that have different letters in different fonts. The box would also contain glue sticks and scissors.

The font box concept can then be done by giving students the same graph and a magazine. The students will flip through the pages looking for different letters.

Menu/phone book/television guide letter hunt: For this the students need one of the previous mentioned items and a highlighter. The teacher would tell the student a particular letter to look for and the student would highlight as many of that letter as they could locate.

Write the letters of the alphabet on the outside edge of a paper plate and write the letters again on individual clothespins. The students would clip the clothespins to the outside edge of the plate. The students can match letters to themselves or upper to lower. (I do this one in summer school for the group that will be entering kindergarten in the fall and they love it!)

We also do the above activity when learning about our first names. I have each students first name written on a sentence strip, the students have to locate the letters in their name and clip them in the appropriate spot.

Starfall This website has short activities for each letter. I use this in the computer center of my room and the kids enjoy using it. The site also has stories and ideas for the year as it progresses.

An interactive letter matching memory game

These are the sight word cubes I created for my kindergarten students to use during literacy center time

During my assessments I noticed that I had several students who did not do well with the 25 kindergarten sight words that we teach.(I think the first grade list is over 100, so I always try and teach part of that list as well.) I decided that this weekend I was going to make some new centers that really focus on exploring and using these words. I have also been focusing on ways that I can differentiate more in my classroom to meet the needs of every child. The following is a list of ideas I am working on now and ideas that I either have used in the past or found on line.

Buzz, Bang,Splat: This is a game that teachers have been using for years. There are lots of different names for it! At the end of the explanation I will note a version my kids created the other day. Write all sight words on cards several times. Also, write the key word (Buzz, Bang, Splat, etc…) on some cards, not too many. Lay all the cards on the table face down. Students one by one choose a card. If they know the card they keep it. If they do not then they put it back. If they select one of the key word cards they put all their cards back into the main pile. I created a recordning sheet called a Buzz Board which will allow the students to record their words after each game.

I had this in a center the other day and a group of three students laid out all the cards on the table. They were individually picking up cards as fast as they could and naming them, if they got the Buzz card the put all cards back on the table. If they did not know a card they asked one of their friends and put it back into the group. (These are the moments that make a teacher smile.)

Bean Building: I took navy beans and write different letters needed to spell our kindergarten sight words. (I also noticed that several students are having difficulty gripping their pencils, so fine motor is another are we are working on.) The students will use the beans to build the 25 kindergarten sight words. They will then write the words on a recording sheet. Recording sheet coming soon!

Sight Word Cube Toss: In my closet I found a box of small wooden cubes and wrote our sight words on them. I am going to have the kids either complete a graph of the amount of times they roll each word or color in a chart for the amount of times they roll the word. After this I will have the students write the word on a recording sheet. (I am thinking of having them do this for the 100th day of school and calling it… Roll 100 words!) Lots of ideas here!

 Kindergarten Sight Word Race (directions on printable)

Mrs. Kilburn’s Sight Word Ideas

Heidi Songs! to teach sight words by singing. Heidi also has some wonderful ideas on her blog.