My Favorite Easter Read-A-Louds

hApPy SpRiNg!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Some of you are off this week or next week for Spring Break. I had mine last week with a three-day weekend for Easter this week. State testing is next week, BUT let's not focus on that.... Let's focus on happy thoughts, like spring and the Easter Bunny! I've picked out a few of my favorite books to read this time of year. I've also included (as usual) free activities with links to go along with them. :)

Happy Easter, Mouse!" is a cute story about our old friend Mouse. He leaves Easter eggs ALL OVER!!! It is a great story to read to your students before they go out to hunt their Easter eggs. You could also leave eggs hidden in the classroom for them to find as a special treat. The treat could be a coupon for a pencil or an eraser, or put a piece of candy inside it. I'm not a big candy-treat-kind-of-teacher, but each to his/her own. Here is a list by delicateconstruction.com that is useful to help you decide what to put in the eggs.

Pete the Cat books are everyone's favorites! In this book, Big Easter Adventure, Pete helps out the Easter Bunny. Making bunny crafts and directed drawing are great to accompany this book. This bunny craft is from Michaele Sommerville's blog Kindergarten's 3 R's. It combines an egg and a bunny! Directed drawings are very popular right now. There are several teacher/bloggers who have them but I especially like Jennifer's from First Grade Blue Skies.

Pinkalicious is a very cute story about an Easter egg scavenger hunt. There are sooooo many activities to do with this story. Coloring Easter eggs, Easter egg hunts and, of course, making an Easter egg craft. I especially like this one from School Time Snippets. The tissue eggs look 3-D!

I hope you enjoyed your Easter. I will be back in April to share about some spring books and activities I do with my class. Until then, enjoy!

January Read-A-Louds

As we're all trying to get through the last week before Winter Break, we (as teachers), are already thinking about January. I've compiled a picture of my all-time favorite read-a-louds. Some are fairly new, but some are what I consider 'classics'. There are so many activities to be done with each of these books from making snow like this activity from Momma's Fun World, to drawing a picture of Martin Luther King like this one from Kindergarten Monkey Business (and they're FREE)! You know I'm all about sharing with other teachers to help each other! "My Brother Martin" and "Back of the Bus" are super for teaching perspective too! "Snowflake Bentley" was a wonderful read-a-loud for my Kinders and 4th graders. I used it as a part of a fiction/non-fiction close-read at both levels which can spill over into science. I hope you have a restful and relaxing holiday break! Enjoy!

Mystery Show & Tell

Welp! It's definitely warm here in Texas.... Rain on the way tomorrow though :) I've been sort of saving this for a while. I used it when I taught Kindergarten and the kids LOVED it! (Not to mention the parents!) It is really a versatile concept, it can be used with just about anything. I've seen teachers do something like it with What's in the Bag?, or their purse. (I don't know about you but my purse is a bottomless pit! We'd be pulling things out all day!) I came across this idea about 15 years ago. It just an idea that teachers could take and manipulate. I created the cards and the question marks for the outside for the bags to make it more of a game and to add a little spark to our show & tell. It had gotten a little bland and I didn't allow the children to bring toys unless it was a 'special' one. I hope you can use it in your classroom! CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD A COPY Enjoy!

A Walk Down Memory Lane

I've been going through some of my old teaching boxes from my elementary teaching days. I found so many things about beginning literacy that I'd forgotten that I did and I wanted to share some of them.
This is Mr. Alphabet :). He helped my Kindergartners learn their beginning, middle and ending sounds. I would feed the items from the letter of the week into his mouth and (in his funny voice) would "spit" them out and ask them if the items started with, ended with or had the sound in the middle of the object. It was so much fun! It was great RTI as well. One of my parents made him for me out of a trash can. (How creative was that parent?)

Next, I had parents take home bags with a specific letter marked on them and had them fill the bags with items that began, ended and had the letter in the middle of the objects. I also had them put two or three items that did not to make that sound for Mr. Alphabet spit them out :). He would swallow and make "yummy" sound if the items corresponded with the letter sounds.

I would just store the items in bags and keep them in boxes in the cabinet.

 

 

 

This is the Kindergarten Star News. I started doing this in 1998 and stopped in 2007 when I went into teaching at the high school level. I know some of you have actually downloaded my optional cover from my TPT store and have made it your own. I'm a firm believer in taking things and making them suit my style of teaching. I'm also a firm believer in - if it's not an original idea, don't change it around and claim it's yours and sell it. Some of the ideas I use have been around forever! I just took them and changed them for my needs in the classroom.

Okay... this is two of the covers I actually made for my books. (Yes, my name used to be Nash but it's now Cummings for those of you who don't know me personally!)

 

I used to line 11x14 paper and make copies of it until I found this paper in a catalog somewhere. It had the perfect amount of lines and space for illustrations.

Students told a "story" each morning (usually the Star Student chosen for the math calendar). After they finished telling me their story, I underlined three words in red for them to illustrate at the top. Later, I would underline sight words in blue for recognition practice. The stories are funny and amazing! I plan to publish them in a book! :)

The name Kindergarten Star News is totally something I came up with... I guess from my Journalism background. I would display them in the room once the students illustrated them. I put past years books in the library for current students to look at them.  I hope this gives you some ideas for your own classroom!
Enjoy!

Kindergarten Bakery

Hello! I've been sooooo busy but I found time to sketch out my lesson plan for my Kindergarten Bakery. I did this lesson every year. It is actually very extensive and include community helpers, sink and float, weighing, graphing, counting, etc. It was always such a blast! The whole school got involved, especially parents of former students. It got so big, we started donating the money. Just click HERE and go to my TPT store. Enjoy!

Center Time

That is probably one of the best things to hear in elementary school! My center time was introduced slowly and revolved around the skills that we were working on at that time. I used a poster with four colored dots. The dots corresponded to dots placed on an alligator’s belly next to each center. I had center teams, which meant four to six students were on the same color dot. I had four center per dot, so that kids could spread out. I rotated the dots every day, or every-other day, depending on how much time we had for centers. Bunny Bucks was a special center that any color dot team could do to help learn their sight words and phonics. I had centers such as listening, writing, reading, magnets (which math and word work could be done along with other things), math (time, numbers, etc.), creative art, free play, felt board stories, science (lots of interactive things like the bean tub, in which I hid something new every week!), puppet theatre, building blocks and puzzles. I constantly updated the centers to reflect, not only a skill they needed to master, but also skills they already had so that they could build on them. –Mrs. C J

Enjoy!

 

 

Word Wands!

These are awesome little pointers, wands and great word work tools. Kindergarteners can use them to practice sight words, as well as, spot them in books, around the room, etc. Click HERE to go to Twist, Twirl, Teach blog and see the original post from Lindsay Domenico. Enjoy!

Digraph Freebie

Here is a great freebie from Heidi Raki at Teachers Pay Teachers. Click HERE to download a copy.

You can also visit her website at http://www.rakisradresources.com/ too. She has LOTS of freebies that are useful for K-2, ELL, ESL, and ELA. Enjoy!

Using a light during story time keeps the interruptions to a minimum. Use any light but this one is easy touch and easy to see. Use it to stop and ask questions during the story for comprehension. You can pick one up at any dollar store. Enjoy!

K-level Spelling

I love this! File folders with center or literacy group writing that encourages language arts and spelling.

Enjoy!

Word Work Centers

LOTS of word work centers to download FREE!
Click here!

Great Resource

This is an awesome resource for any Kindergarten teacher. click here to take you to the site. :) Enjoy!