Growing Kinders

Valentines for the Kiddos

Here is my little project tonight…

I was inspired by this…

you rock my socks off tween valentines | thirty handmade days You Rock My Socks Off Valentine! printable

My wheels started turning…. I always say to my kiddos “you knocked my socks off!” or “do you think you can knock my socks off?” They always get so giddy when I say it, so I hope they become equally as excited with their Valentine’s from me!

You know I love you all so much, so I’m going to share this little printable in case you want to use it with your kiddos! I know they all knock YOUR socks off too!

Happy Heart Day!!

Thanks for the amazing fonts Cara!

Heart Day

Valentine’s day seems to pop up so quickly each year! January buzzes by so fast, and then all of a sudden it’s here! This month we focus on Friendship, standing up for each other, and kindness. We’ll be reading some of my very favorite books this month:

We will also be working on some of these activities this week and next

Here are some centers that we have worked on in the past as well:

Just a simple vowel sort. I love doing sorts with the kids. This sort is from Hugs and Kisses – Short U and I games.

I’m in the process of making a bunch of sorts from a book recommended by my super smart friend Kim Adsit : Word Sorts and More. It’s a long process, but I think in the end it will be so worth it!

Here is a freebie game that you can use with your kiddos!

This sort is from Kim Adsit’s Heart’s Friends and Valentine’s Pack.

Here the children practice with onsets and rimes in these adorable word family books! This is a center called Monkey Love!

This is one of my favorite centers! It’s a “lift the flap” center. Each heart is a flap. The children lift up the flap, look at the picture, clap the syllables and record it on their recording sheet. It’s so fun!

We will also be learning about Pandas this week and next!

Some other goodies that I will be doing this week:

Even though I’m still going to be in school all week, I still am using Cheryl’s fantastic sub tub unit!

We were lucky enough to get a snow day today! (surprisingly, although I live in the arctic north, we NEVER get snow days!) It’s nice to be home to catch up on laundry, cleaning, and cuddle time with my little ladies!

CVC–Intervention

Some of my kiddos have been struggling with segmenting and blending CVC words, so during our intervention time, I’ve been working really hard with them on these super important skills.

I started with short a because all of them are quite secure with that vowel sound.

We have been using Elkonin boxes to push sounds and really listen for the sounds. I use the glass gems that you can find at Michaels to push the sounds.

We’ll use these push lights to “push” each sound. I found these at the dollar store. They do use 4 batteries each though, so stock up on batteries!

I also have been using these word sliders. My kiddos LOVE LOVE LOVE these! They think they are SO fun!

I put 5-6 in the envelope and go “around the table.” I do this every day as a quick warm up.

Some days, we may write words on our brand new mini-whiteboards from Lakeshore. I LOVE THESE! They don’t take up any space on my table and they’re magnetic too!

We might also build words with letter tiles or magnetic letters.

I have these really fun balls from Lakeshore too that I love to use. I can’t find a photo of them though! They are plastic balls and have letters to build CVC words. Does anyone know what I’m talking about?!

We’ll also play some fun games to practice words. This game is based on a game I used to play as a kid! “Slap Jack!”

I played a round or two…or three…or four with MY favorite Kindergartener, and she couldn’t get enough of it!

Her smile says it all!!

Sometimes, I’ll have the children get their whole body moving to segment words. I’ll tape Elkonin boxes on the floor and have the children “jump” the sounds. Miss A. was a great model for me!

Here’s a little video of her demonstrating – she was more than willing!

I like to get children using their bodies as much as possible, so we’ll stretch out CVC words using our “sound arm” too. I meant to get pics of A. demonstrating, but forgot! She’s sleeping now, so I’ll have to add them later! But it goes a little like this:

1. Put your sound arm out.

2. Using your other hand, touch your shoulder at say the first sound.

3. Touch your elbow and say the middle sound.

4. Touch your wrist and say the last sound.

5. Bring your arm all the way back to the top, and slide it down slowly blending the letters together.

I hope you can get a bit of a visual!

We’ll also complete these fun mini-books:

These activities are all available in my new CVC Intervention pack for short a:

Stop on by and tell me what you think! The other vowels will be coming soon!

Would you like to win a copy? I’m sitting here watching the Grammy’s….who was your favorite winner tonight? Or who do you think SHOULD have won?! Leave a comment and tell me and I’ll pick 3 winners tomorrow evening! (Monday 2/11) *Remember to leave your e-mail!!**

More 100th Day

For the first 100 days of school, we uncover one apple from our growing number line. The children LOVE this – they get so excited every day! One of my kinder buddies uses this in her classroom and I knew I had to have the same one (when I saw it almost 8 years ago!) (<3 U LB!)

EXCITEMENT when we added the 100 to our 100 grid! (LOVE the exclamation point at the end!) The children are begging me for another 100s chart to keep adding the days in school on!! #happyteacher!

In the past, I’ve always used colored strips of construction paper on our 100th day hats. This year, I was running short of time and didn’t get them prepped fast enough. SO….I just cut strips of white paper and threw them on really quickly with masking tape. I knew they HAD to be decorated, and since we’ve been talking about number combinations to 10 so much, I decided we would play a little game. I quickly (and I mean quickly – I had the last 5 minutes of my planning time to prep it!) pulled out playing cards A-10, and my stash of dobbers. I have enough dobbers now so that each table has about 4 each and we can exchange.

The children chose a card from the table (the ace equals 1), dobbed the number, changed colors and dobbed the remaining dots to make ten. Make sense? The children did great, and made for some fun, colorful hats! (Sorry I forgot to take a pic of the finished product!) Kim Adsit has a MUCH cuter version in her 100th day pack.

The children had a great time making their 100th day collections for our display. My bulletin boards were all full with winter stuff so I had to punt and just hang them on my classroom door! The children loved looking at all of the different 100 collections!

The children had a blast searching around the room and pretending to be 100th day detectives! They loved discovering the 100 on their grids!

And of course, or 100th day snack is ALWAYS a hit!

and dobbing to 100! (Can you tell I love dobbers!!?)

And we finally finished our Zero the Hero book! This was super exciting for the kids since we have been working on it every 10 days. They were so excited to bring it home to show their families!

We made text to self connections and wrote about what worries us!

When my cat ran away but he came back.

I am worried about someone getting hurt.

*sigh. so. sweet*

I am SO EXCITED about this next project! Julie Lee makes these amazing 100th day collages, and I knew I wanted to do it this year. I wanted 5 different activities so each table group could have their own.

We started out counting out 10 sets of 10 on our giant ten frames. Once we checked and double checked, we got out the glue bottles, and glued all of our pieces on.