Author Robert Munsch Listening Center QR Codes

Boys and girls just love Robert Munsch books they are extremely humorous.  Robert's books are excellent examples of story telling.  
I love to use his stories for a variety of reading and writing lessons.  I am not going to pretend to reinvent the wheel when it comes to these lessons.  There are some excellent lessons on Pinterest.  I put some links on my teaching website with some suggestions.  

This year I plan on printing out the book covers and QR codes and will hang them up on the back of the classroom door. That way the students can walk up to the door and scan the codes and begin the listening to the stories.  The book covers, codes and reading response sheets are free at my TPT store.   

Author of the Month Eric Carle

 Spring is the best time of the year to read Eric Carle's books.  Caterpillars, butterflies, clouds, flowers, ladybugs, fireflies and crickets are all things that make me think of Spring.    The kids love listening/watching stories on the ipad and that is why I like to have the Listening Center fresh and new each month.  I put something new in this pack.  There is a clip from youtube on how Eric Carle creates his illustrations.  I think it is important for the children to see the authors and illustrations as real people.

 What I like about this layout is that the posters make a nice display with the covers of the books that Eric Carle wrote.  I have them hanging low on the door where the students can reach and scan them in the Reading Center.  

I have some follow up sheets as well.  There are three different levels of sheets so you can pick what will work best for your students.  

You can pick this up for FREE at my TPT store. 

Happy Spring! 

Easter Listening Center

Keeping the boys and girls in kindergarten and first grade interested in reading all year long can be challenging.  That is why I have been working so hard this year to find stories the kids will be motivated to listen to.  It is more work than you think.   Creating an engaging listening center is a lot different these days, my students prefer to listen and watch stories on the ipad.  

When I first got my ipad I was able to find lots of story apps for $1 however that has not been the case lately.  In fact many of the stories can be costly or the apps are confusing for young readers to manage on their own.  So I have turned to youtube and the generosity of the wonderful people who are reading the stories and recording them.  

I find links on youtube and filter out the surrounding advertisements and create my own qr codes. My students use this center on their own as part of my weekly reading block and I want to make sure the links are safe for them.  Each week my students are required to listen to one story on the ipad and complete a listening form.  I use all sorts of different forms I have collected over the years on Pinterest and various other sources during the first two quarters. 

However, once third quarter starts I have the students start to complete the forms attached to the unit.  We start with the simple ones and work our way to writing our own letter on lined paper. 

I like to print out the listening cards on card stock and laminate them.  I punch a hole in the corner and gather them together with a ring.  I keep the cards in the ipad basket.  Another teacher at my school hangs the cards up on the students’ lockers.  Another organization idea might be to keep them in a small binder or create a bulletin board with the cards in your reading center. 

Click Here to get The Easter Listening Center for FREE! 

Teaching Letter Writing and Story Elements

I use the bookmarks as a guide to help my students with spelling and as a reminder of what I expect in their letters.

On Monday each child picks a book at his/her reading level.  Then they practice reading it in class by themselves and with

their friends each day. They take the books home each night to practice with their families.  I also try to check in during the week.  

On Thursday the students begin to write their letters to me.  When I introduce this project each year I start simple with

one or two elements and we add a new element each week as we feel comfortable writing.

When the students complete their letter they sit down and conference with me. We talk about each sentence and we discuss the positives and what we can work towards next week.  After our conference the children draw a picture on the back of the paper.

You can get your FREE copy of the bookmarks and letter writing papers at my TPT store HERE. 

Counting the Gold for FREE

I am still working with this little guy on number identification to 20.  Well to be honest we are still working on identifying numbers to 12.  He still needs go back to a number line and count and recheck for 8,9,10,11, and 12.  

So I put this little St. Patrick's day game board together for him. It is similar to some adding boards I saw on Pinterest, however we are just identifying the numbers.  I picked up some gold coins at the Dollar Store to use as markers.  

Unfortunately dice will not work for this game so I made some cards. The cards work out great because then he is reading the number two times. 

On the other side of the game I just typed up a bunch of gold for him to practice reading numbers.  

This little guy is adorable he loves to play games that are seasonal. 

  I also thought my advanced kindergarten guys could use this as an addition game as well.  They could flip two cards over and add them together and find the sum.  

You can find this game at my TPT store for free.  
Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Valentine Math Ideas

Valentine's Day is just around the corner and I am seeing lots of colorful hearts everywhere in school and at the stores. This week I have a new lesson for the kindergarten students thanks to Oriental Trading.  They gave me these wonderful ten frame trays and valentine erasers.  Which are perfect because the kindergarteners are just beginning to learn about decomposing numbers. The trays are so nice and easy to use.  I like that they are easy to wipe off the germs. I don't know about your classrooms but it seems everyone at my school is coughing and sneezing.  

I created a simple little worksheet for the lesson and it is in color to match the heart erasers.  It is also a FREEBIE and you can download here... something simple and fun to help the students learn during the month of February.  

 The kids are loving the heart erasers.  I am using them with several different age groups through the day.  

 I had my little four year olds sorting and counting the heart erasers by colors.  Then we use them as markers in our Alphabet Bingo game.  

Another group was working on patterning and having tons of fun creating patterns with the hearts.  

I also received from Oriental Trading these sensory cards.  At first I was just using them with the four year olds in our little sand boxes.  Then we started using the cards as flash cards and if a student mades a mistake on the number he traces the number 3x with his finger. The boys love touching the cards.   

One of my five year olds is working on what number is missing.  So I pulled out these cards and it is so easy to set up the numbers in a row and then figure out what is missing.  The little girl loves this activity as well.  

Don't forget to look for the coupon link on the OT site.  Scroll all the way down to the bottom and look at the links on the left.  If you are anything like me, I always like to save anything I can. 

Thank you Oriental Trading for the wonderful products.    

A-Maze-ing Valentines for Your Students

If you read this blog often you may already know that I am working with many students from K4 through 2nd grade at my school.  So when it is time to put together valentines for the children I starting looking for something simple and easy.  

Oriental Trading offered me some wonderful gifts for the children. So I picked out these little heart mazes for each child from the valentine page because I thought I could easily put something together with these.    

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Then I had to decide what to do with them, however there are already so many wonderful ideas on Pinterest.  So I combined all the best ideas and came up with my own layout. 

I really liked the idea of adding the word FRIEND because that is something all the teachers at our work really hard to teach the children friendship.   

Click Here if you want your FREE Valentine Cards.  

PS  Don't forget the coupon page if you have a big order.  

Author of the Month Helen Lester

I can honestly say the Helen Lester's books are some of my favorite books for teaching young children.  The children love the humor and illustrations in the books.   What I like about the books as a teacher is that each story has a lesson to learn.  

Helen Lester has written so many wonderful books it is really worth your time to look at her website and see which of her books will work in your lesson plans.  

I have been working hard each month creating links for the teachers at my school on our share website.  I also put a couple links for a few free resources I found on Pinterest as well.   I have created qr codes for the classroom with ipads.  

For each of the Helen Lester books I found on youtube I found the cover on google images.  Then I created a qr code.  

I created mini posters that I will hang up by the author board and it will have a dual purpose.  It will look good and the kiddos can get the qr codes to listen to stories. 

I also created some reading challenge sheets for advance students.  You know who I mean, those students who are the first to finish everything.  

   You can find everything FREE HERE!

Reference Folders

One of the things I noticed as I am working in my new position at school is that I am often walking back into classrooms to get reference charts or wishing I had a poster hanging up somewhere to show the students where to find basic information.  The other day I noticed of the kindergarten teachers had some reference folders in her classroom.  There are tons of ideas on Pinterest under mini office. I found lots of awesome ideas but there was not one folder that fit all my needs. However, I found lots of wonderful teachers who were willing to share the things they created for FREE!

So I printed out a couple of ideas I thought would be useful in my daily teaching and put together my own folders.  

Inside the folder I crammed in as much language arts as possible. I believe all of these resources were free.  I did add some stickers for extra color.   

1.  Alphabet Chart  by Kindercraze

2.  Blend/Digraph Helper by Stephanie Ann

3.  Color Chart by Mrs. Ricca's Kindergarten

4.  Days of the Week and Months by  ??

5.  Seasons by Homeschool Creations

On the outside of the folder I put as much math as possible.

1.  Hundreds Chart by Kindercraze  (This was from a paid product I already had.) 

2.  Numberline by ??

3.  Shapes and Number words by Homeschool Creations

4.  5 Star Sentences Guideline by Kreative Kinder

I think this is a wonderful idea and you can make them for different age groups.  It is nice to have a reference folder handy when you need one.  

P.S.  I know I am missing two resources I can not find where I got them from.  If I come across them I will update the page.  Sorry.  

Froggy Pond

Last week as I worked with my littlest kindergarteners I noticed they needed to work on identifying their numbers 6-10.  So I threw together this cute froggie game.  I picked the froggie graphics because I know I have froggie counters that the kids will love. 

I printed out two sets of the number cards.   

Right now I have the game set up with the cards just to identify the numbers because that is what my students need right now.  I may add some counting cards later.  

This is a freebie at my TPT store.  Enjoy!

Fire Prevention Ideas

It's time to start planning for Fire Safety Awareness.  There are so many wonderful books to read to the class however a rare one to find is my favorite by Felicia Bond, Poinsettia and the Firefighters.  I checked on Amazon and it is only available to purchase as a used book.  The kids love the story most of them can identify with the character Poinsettia.  

I added the poem Ten Little Firefighters to my Poetry Basket this year.  As always I made a homework sheet for the children to share with their families.  I believe I found the poem on Pinterest, however I did not have anything marked down in my notebook from last year.    

Click Here for your FREE copy

My main resource for the week are these videos I found by the Ocoee Fire Department on Youtube.  I have them on my teaching site CK Primary.    They are super cute with puppets and firefighters.  My class loves them.  I also used a free Fire Safety Pack by The Clever Classroom as a follow up.  I do not use all the pages.  I pick and choose which ones  that are the most important to me based on the time we have together that week.   

Finally, I found some free apps that I am looking forward to checking out.  They all can be downloaded on the Apple App Store.  

 

Free Halloween Gifts From Oriental Trading

I received this box of Halloween items from Oriental Trading in exchange for a write up about how I would use these items at school with the different classes I teach.   

Thank you so much to Oriental Trading for these items, the children at my school are enjoying the items and activities.  



The first item I picked were these smiley apple erasers.  I love using erasers in estimation jars.  I did this project with the first graders I work with.  I had them make predictions on the recording sheets I made.

click here for your freebie

Then I had the students lay out the apples and count them.  This was important because here I noticed one of the first graders struggles with one-to-one counting.  

 It was B week in the K4 room so I took the plastic bats in there.  Wow you would have thought I had a pot of gold.  They were so excited for the bats.  I am working with one little guy on almost every skill.  So we started by sorting them by color.  Then we counted each color and then all the bats together.  Next, we made patterns with the bats.  The children did not want me to take the bats with me so I left the bats so they could play with them.

 This week it will be the letter C in K4 so I am taking each class a set of Candy Corn pointers. I hot glued them to the large popsicle sticks. I also made a set for the K5 classes as well.  I thought the K4's could search the room for the letter C. The K5's can use them for reading sticks.  

 I am also going to use the foam stickers I got in the K4 and K5 rooms.  I thought we could sort them by color and size.  Then make patterns with them.  I know the kids will love these.  

 I think the K5 students will be reading Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf this week and I thought this leaf art project will be perfect for them.  

The plastic spiders are for the first graders next week.  They will be learning about spiders.  I put together this estimation jar for them and a guessing sheet.  

Click Here for your freebie

When they are finished with guessing and counting the spiders I thought it would be fun to make this art project I found on Pinterest.  

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The last thing that I received I am saving for the Halloween party in K5.  We will be making Halloween pattern necklaces.  I thought we could use smiley candy corn necklace to go with that project.  

Thank you again to Oriental Trading for providing the resources used in this post for the students at my school.