One of the hardest parts of introducing sight words whole group, at least for me, is giving those words meaning and building fluency. Of course, we get practice with this in our small guided reading groups too, but I wanted the time we spent with our sight words while group to be as meaningful as possible.That's why, I started using mixed up sentences as a whole group sight word fluency activity. I knew how powerful this activity was in small groups, so I wanted to see if it would work just as ...
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Name Crafts for Preschool and Kindergarten (+ a free craft!)
If you are like me, you are constantly looking for new and engaging ways to practice spelling names throughout the year. After all, you can only do those name tracing worksheets so many times. That's why I decided to start doing monthly name crafts!It's scientifically proven that crafts increase engagement by 800% (OK, that's a lie, but we love a good craft). Students love seeing their name on their craft and we use these to build community by personalizing our classroom displays year-round, ...
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Books to Begin Writer’s Workshop in Kindergarten
If you teach kindergarten, you know that writer's workshop at the beginning of the year consists of learning what a story is, learning how to tell a story using pictures, and then beginning to write words. It can be difficult to find mentor texts that focus on these things! That's why I rounded up this list of my favorite books to begin writer's workshop in kindergarten.This post contains affiliate links.Ralph Tells a Story
In this story, Ralph struggles to think of an idea to write about. ...
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Easy Fine Motor Alphabet Activities
If you teach preschool, pre-k, or kindergarten, you know how important it is to get in letter identification and letter formation practice as often as possible. But, honestly, it can get boring real quick if you're doing the same things over and over again! This post is full of hands on ideas to combine alphabet practice and fine motor work - the best of both worlds!
This activity is perfect because you can keep it new by just switching out small manipulatives like rocks or mini erasers ...
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How To Run Literacy Centers in Kindergarten
I have a confession to make... I hate rotations. I hate the chaos and confusion that inevitably happens, even when I take the time to teach.. and re-teach.. and teach again. So when I started giving my students choice in their literacy centers, yes it hurt a little to let go of control, but it also solved all of the problems I had AND instantly increased my students' engagement. Win!Best of all, this system allows me to easily differentiate my centers too! Obviously, you differentiate with any ...
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Watermelon Activities Perfect for a Watermelon Day!
I don't know about your students, but it seems like the moment May hit, mine suddenly lost all ability to stay still for even a single minute... and we go to school until June! So instead of completely losing my mind, I decided to go with the flow and create a hands on watermelon day investigation!Since this fit perfectly into our study of life cycles, we started by spending the first part of the week researching watermelons using my Watermelon Unit! We wrote about watermelons, labeled ...
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Hands On Alphabet Activities for Letter ID Intervention
Alphabet recognition activities and letter ID intervention are so important in preK and kindergarten, but finding hands on activities can get difficult and it can get easy to fall into a rut. These activities will help you take the guesswork out of letter recognition intervention!
The reason I love these centers so much is because they're editable! That means that I can choose my target letters, type them in, and print. I can have students practice matching uppercase letters to lowercase to ...
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Living and Nonliving Things Activities for Kindergarten or 1st Grade
I love exploring living and nonliving things each spring because its the perfect way to kick off our plant and animal studies! We spent a week exploring what makes something alive and what living things need to stay alive!
Living and Nonliving Things Picture Sorts
After reading about living things with the book, "What's Alive?" by Kathleen Zoehfeld, we complete this picture sort whole group.
On day one, we did a simple picture sort to get my students thinking and to prepare them ...
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How To Get Your Kindergarten Class to Set Goals Independently!
When I tell people that my kindergarten students are setting goals, coming up with strategies to help them meet their goals, and keeping track of their progress towards those goals, they usually give me a "yeah, right" look. After all, they're still babies! But trust me - those babies are capable of a lot more than you might think!Today, i'm going to show you how you can EASILY get your students setting classroom goals too!
Getting Started
We started setting goals in November this year. ...
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Try These Free Earthworm Activities with Your Class Today!
If your kindergarten or 1st grade students are anything like mine, they LOVE to learn about anything icky or slimy! That means that earthworms are right up their alley. We spent this week learning all about these wiggly creatures. You can too with these FREE earthworm activities!
We read all about earthworms. We learned about how they are different from insects, their unique bodies, and how earthworms are helpful to plants and humans!
All About Earthworms Writing
We made an anchor ...
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