The letter B, measuring with pumpkins and a Halloween write the room freebie

Hey friends! So my internet isn't working, apparently my modem died and AT&T is going to send me a new one. Not fun but luckily I have a super cool neighbor who is letting me borrow his wi-fi for the evening! :)

Alright, so my little nephew Hank and I have been working hard reviewing capital letters and learning lowercase letters. He is definitely the youngest child I've taught, so I'm in the learning process with him. He is very bright but he isn't even three yet, so I'm trying to make sure I'm not pushing him too far too fast. I've definitely noticed that he needs to strengthen his fine motor skills so we are going to start making letters and words out of Play Doh soon.

I'm experimenting with his ABC book, for A I let him color it in, for B I let him tear paper and glue it in the B and for the C we are going to use dot paint markers. Coloring is still kinda messy for him, tearing was way too difficult for him...I'm thinking the dot markers are going to be a nice medium because he will have to hold the marker and workout his hands but it will also leave cute dots for a nice tactile experience when rereading the page. Live and learn! Here are some pics from our last session:

Here is the "B" page. Remember he is not even 3! So he rocked it! Next time we will use the "Do a Dot" art markers I bought from Lakeshore.

Hank circled the pictures that start with B (yay phonemic awareness!) and then circled the capital and lowercase bs only.

Here we worked on the popcorn word "big". I read it to him, traced it and wrote it for him. He had to find the word big and butter it up with yellow crayon. He did a great job at that!

After we work on a word I write it on his flashcards (those are supposed to go with him in the car so we can review his popcorn words) and the yellow card is a piece of popcorn that goes in his popcorn word bag that you can see below. When I taught kinder I would give my kids those little popcorn bags to put their words in. They loved it! I think I got the bags in the Target dollar bins, but it was ages ago!

Alrighty, moving on to measuring with pumpkins!! My friend Hannah used my Halloween measuring packet to measure with pumpkins. They did this whole group on Monday. Once the kids do it together, they can then work on a similar measuring game from the packet in a math station. She said they really enjoyed it! Here are some pics:

And a freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeebie! :) I've made some snazzy write the room pages to add to your literacy center or daily five time. There are two versions: 1. simple old write the room with beginning sounds or 2. write the room: nouns (for the older kids 1st or 2nd graders). 

I hope you can find use for these pages. You can pick the file up here. Alright, off to bed! ;)

2 year old super genius, freebies and a flash give-a-way!

Happy Fall Y'all!! I loooove this time of year. It really is my favorite, Christmas is a close second. I love pumpkins, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and fall leaves (even though in Texas our leaves stay green and don't fall off until January). I'm so excited to go trick-or-treating with baby Jackson for the first time. Well, we went last year, but honestly how much fun can a 1 month old have trick or treating? This year he will actually get to participate...so excited!

Alright, down to business. A week ago I started tutoring my 2 year old (23 month old) nephew Hank. He is SO adorable and he is ridiculously smart. He knows all of his capital letters and their sounds and he isn't even 3 yet. I remember teaching kinder and my most struggling students barely knew any letters at all. I'm so excited for Hank and so are his parents. 

We've been doing 30 minute sessions where we are reviewing letters and sounds and starting to associate lower case letters with the capitals. We started by playing a game called "Gobble Gobble". It's similar to other games like "POP" or "Oops" whatever you want to call it really. You cut out all the cards and put in some cards that have a turkey on them. Each player takes turn pulling out a card and saying the name of the letter and it's sound. If they get a turkey, they have to jump up and say "Gobble, gobble, gobble" and they lose their cards and start over. The person with the most cards at the end is the winner.

Here are the cards if you want to use them for a center or small group activity. Kids LOVE jumping around like turkeys...but of course as a teacher you know this already! :)

After we warmed up we worked on capital and lowercase letter A. He knows capital A no problem, it's the lowercase that tricks him up, especially how different fonts can make the a look so different. We are starting off basic, same font for a while but once he has more exposure to different lowercase letters I'll start exposing him to the funky fonts and teach him how to decipher.

Here he is working on the A practice page. Now that I know more about his fine motor skills I think he can tear paper easily enough to wear we can tear construction paper and cover the A to make it a more tactile experience for him. This day he just traced it with a chubby crayon, keep in mind he is 2! Not 5. He's just a smarty pants.

We are also working on learning sight words. We called them "popcorn words" in kinder so I'm keeping with that tradition. I made him a little A book with two words per page and a simple picture. The sight word we learned this day was "an" and I had him go through his book and circle the lowercase As, then we went through and put "butter" on the word "An". We didn't have a yellow crayon so we used orange. I used to tell my kids to "butter up" their popcorn words by coloring them in yellow. I also made him a piece of popcorn with the word "an" on it that we are keeping in a little baggy for him to practice with at home. 

Hank also worked on a page where he circled the pictures that started with A and then had to circle all the capital and lowercase As. The lowercase was hard for him. Especially the Q! It was a good learning experience though as we started learning the different formations of letters. I talked with him about how Q has a tail and a doesn't . 

To wrap it up we played a letter sound game I bought a Lakeshore. I picked some lowercase letters that look very similar to capitals to help him associate them easily. He was able to tell me where the pictures went according to their beginning sound. Ummm he's awesome. I know! I gave his mom (my big sister) a CD with rhymes because I also want him to start learning how to rhyme, we will get into that later down the road. I'm so excited to get to teach this little brainiac! 

Here are the A pages I made. Next week we are working on B. I'll post those for free too if you want to use as send home work or small group intervention for kids in your class. As we work through the alphabet I'll tweak things here and there but I'm planning on making this a huge ABC/Sight word unit to share with y'all down the road. Hank is my little guinea pig! :)

Alright, flash give-a-way! I just finished a Halloween themed measurement unit for my kinder friends. This unit covers Common Core math for kinder (K.MD.A.1, K.MD.A.2) and the Texas TEKS (K.7A, K.7B, 1.7A,1.7D). Here are some pics:

These math stations would be great to use that week of Halloween. Kids love anything and everything Halloween!! This unit was created for kinder but could be used in a first or second grade room as a review of basic nonstandard measurement skills. I've included picture visuals for directions and vocabulary posters. You can pick it up in my TPT store here. I'm also giving away one of these units to the first reader who comments on this blog post! Good luck!! (If you don't teach kinder-second, you can choose my monster mash writing unit instead which works for grades 1-3.)

All blog comments get sent to me for approval first, so you won't see your comment pop up right away. I'll announce the winner later today! Happy Wednesday y'all! :)

Monster Mash Writing Flash Freebie!

Hey friends! I just finished my monster themed creative writing unit. I wanted to share some of the posters I created with my fabulous readers. I created writing process and 6+1 traits posters. I'm sharing the 6+1 traits posters for free until Thursday! I used Creative Clips clip art, LOOOOVE Krista's stuff, so adorable. 

These posters will be posted in my Google Docs until Thursday. Make sure to pick them up here. My Monster Mash writing unit will be on sale until Thursday too! Here's a preview of the file:

You can pick it up here. Ok I have to get outside and enjoy the BEAUTIFUL weather we are having today! Happy Fall y'all!! :)

Math Journal Freebies!

Happy Friday! I had a great week teaching math to some super cute second graders. My old school is year round and they are currently on a break. During their break they offer intersession courses for students who need a little extra support. I taught second grade math. Here's what we did this week:

First, I had a ton of extra spiral journals from last year. So I gave each student one to use as a resource for mastering their math facts. Here's what they put on the cover:

On the inside cover I had them glue in a "cheat sheet" to help them remember the math facts we learned and practiced this week:

I also had them glue in a note for them and their parents:

We made pockets for each set of flashcards. I forgot to take a pic of "Don't get stuck, count up" for the doubles plus one set, but here are the doubles and sums of ten sets:

We did some fun ten frame math stations from my ten frame math stations pack. We did a ten frame scavenger hunt. I printed out sets of ten frames from 0-30 and the kids walked around the room trying to find the matching letter for each set. They loved this!

They did another math station from my ten frames pack called "Roll, Build, Add and Record" where they had to build a set using the ten frames and find the sum. 

I love these number cubes or "dice" because they are differentiated. The kids knew that the yellow cubes were a little easier than the red cubes. They were able to adjust the challenge of their game by switching cubes.

We got into a little bit of subtraction. They played a subtraction game with ten frames. This game was also differentiated. Once they mastered subtracting from 10, they then practiced using double ten frames and subtracting from 20. 

Sorry some of the pics are blurry, I got many action shots! On the final day (Thursday) we made a pocket book and sorted flashcards according to the phrase we learned to remember them by: sums of ten "Ten is my friend", doubles "Double is no trouble" and doubles plus 1 "Don't get stuck, count up". For doubles plus 1 I taught them to use the double they already knew that was close to the problem, then just count up 1. For example: for the problem 6+7 I would tell them to use the fact that they knew 6+6 is 12 and just count up 1. 

Finally, we reviewed some problem solving skills using a page from Amy Lemons' Double Digit Subtraction pack. We learned about key words for addition and subtraction in problem solving. The kids then sorted the words and glued them into the addition or subtraction sign. They glued this into their math journal. 

All in all,  a great week and I think we made some progress. I hope the kids use the journals to practice, practice, practice! Click here for a link to my ten frames math stations pack. Click here for Amy Lemons' double digit subtraction pack (where I got the problem solving key word sheet). Here is a link to the flashcards and math journal pockets I made. And finally, here's a link to the math journal cover page and inserts if you'd like to use them. Do you use math journals or notebooks in your class? I'd love to hear how other teachers use them!