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!

March Read-A-Louds

March is my favorite month! I love St. Patrick's Day! Spring is on its way! ANNNNNNDDDDD, it's my birthday month! Very special! I'm lucky enough to have my birthday off every year from school because it falls during Spring Break! Yipppppeeeee! Happy birthday to meeeeee! I wanted to share some of my favorite books for the month of March. All of them are St. Patrick's Day themed, of course.

I love this book. I've been reading it for years. The little ones can really relate to "not being big enough" to get to do things. They also get to learn about a traditional St. Patrick's Day parade in Ireland. There's always lots of questions and oooohhhhh's and aaaaahhhhh's. Love it!

The "Old Lady Who Swallowed Everything!" LOL! I remember waaaayyyy back when she'd only swallowed a fly (and some other animals)! The kids really enjoy reading books about the Old Lady and making a craft to go along with it. There are several on Pinterest and TPT, so go take a look! Here's a link to a craft from Make Learning Fun .com. Super Cute!

Green Shamrocks is a great book to read before making lucky shamrocks with your class. You could also have a class parade and decorate headbands, bracelets, etc. to wear during the parade. :) Here is a list of 50 Shamrock Crafts from Penny at Meet Penny Save, Serve, Love.

The Night Before St. Patrick's Day is a great book! It's a great comparison to The Night Before Christmas. Kids really see the connection and love to point it out if you read both! Here is a really cute rainbow and pot of gold craft from Crafty Morning.

This is a super-funny book about Leprechauns and their antics! Here is a craft from Housing a Forest to do after reading. You can also can "trap" a leprechaun for your class. Cheryl from moms & munchkins has a whole blog post loaded with ideas to bait and trap a leprechaun.

This book is great for great for the little ones who are still learning their numbers one to ten. There are several number game options to use with this one. Here are some great ideas from Vanessa over at Pre-K Pages for counting and number recognition using play dough mats.

Last, but not least, The Luckiest St. Patrick's Day Ever! This is such an awesome book! You can really do some great activities with it. Here is a great writing assignment and craft from Cara over at The First Grade Parade.

I hope these are useful for you! Have a great rest of February! (Don't forget about Leap Day!) I'll probably post some fun activities about it this weekend. See you soon! 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!

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!

 

 

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!

Sight Word Freebie

HELLO! Been off-line for a while! Spring Fever :)
Here is a freebie from Kreative in Kindergarten. Go check it out! Click Here

Writing Prompts

Great for early writing K-2. Head over to whattheteacherwants.blog.com to grab a copy

Click Here