Growing Kinders: September 2013

In case you missed it at the end of last week, I posted a new little diddy. This is something that I started working on almost a year and a half ago, and then started revamping this summer. I FINALLY finished it!

I am in love with these activities! They are simple enough to do on a regular basis (for morning work, maybe?!), but still fun and engaging for kids!

Here are a few samples..

There are three different types of response sheets….

Some mats for play dough stamping – great to print on BRIGHT paper!

And some bright and colorful cards for stamping words with letter stamps. (There is a response sheet included!)

You’ll also find a fun little game that’s great for interventions or literacy centers!

Just click {here} to check it out!

What else do we do to review sight words?

One of my most popular posts EVER is {this one} where I shared this great sight word chants.

My kids LOVE this chants! I keep them close by to use for little time fillers and brain breaks!

I also LOVE to use the Heidi Song’s sight word DVD’s – these are also great for a little brain break! Anytime we can put anything to music, it’s a hit!

Another favorite are our sight word poems. These poems have been around forever, but the kids do seem to love them!

Sight Word Poetry Pages: 100 Fill-in-the-Blank Practice Pages That Help Kids Really Learn the Top High-Frequency Words

I adore this fun idea!

Sight Word Connect Four - put sticky dots with letters on, on the counters. Great idea! (",) by willie

and along the same lines….

Sarah Cooley {First Grader at Last} posted this fun game waaaayy back in 2010!

Of course, we are always practicing sight words during our literacy centers!

We read and chant our word wall…

We practice with our daily fix-its {here} (for the end of Kindergarten) and {here} (for the beginning)

We practice during our daily news…

We practice when we come into the classroom…

We practice when we leave the room…

We build our ice cream cones when we learn each new set of sight words…

We play lots of whole class games…

We build our words with magnetic letters, and mix them up and fix them throughout the day….

Sometimes we even stamp them on our hands!

We have secret, whisper words….

And so….so…..so….many more fun and engaging ways!

Phew! What are your favorite ways to practice sight words? Let a comment below and tell me your favorites, and I’ll pick a winner or two to get my new sight word resource!

….and you know what that means! Time to switch out our calendar and put our September writing pieces into our portfolios.

The children LOVE calendar time every day, and it makes me SO happy! We practice SO many skills every day. If you already have my calendar pack, be sure to go back and re-download it! I’ve added TONS of extras so you have a variety of different options when planning your calendar!

If you’re interested, you can take a peek at it, by clicking below:

Here a couple of sneak peeks of what our September calendar looked like… (all of the calendar songs are scattered throughout the blog – sorry there is no rhyme or reason to it!)

We will be adding a few more skills in October. I like to start out reeeaaaaalllllyyyyy slow and build up their stamina and confidence for calendar time! They’ll be SO excited to see the new pages on Tuesday! (They *cheer!* yippee!!)

I’ve also made a few changes to my focus wall… I am loving how this is ONE BIG anchor chart for the kiddos! It is right behind my teaching area, so we “read” it and review it every day!

After being home sick for two days, I needed to go in today for a couple of hours to get caught up. (Getting better – starting another round of antibiotics to clear up the pneumonia – thanks for all of the well wishes!!) I brought this cute little helper with me today. I tell ya – she’s a hard worker, and I would hire her anytime!

So, here are my plans for the week – be sure to download them {here} and then download from Google Docs (drive) to utilize the clickable links! All the centers are the same from last week since we are on a 2 week rotation!

Click {here} to download!

Everything is subject to change! It’s a wild week this week with pictures and goal setting conferences in the evenings!