So, as you might know, I am a Kindergarten Teacher AND a Mommy Teacher. I like to share classroom ideas that are practical for Mommy (and Daddy) Teachers that WANT to have some supplemental learning fun with their kids at home…..
Or, maybe you are a homeschooler and you tie these fun activities into what you are already doing…..either way, don’t stop! You are making such a difference!
So, you might find this interesting…
We have a pumpkin in our class that a Reading Friend gave us. We call him Frank (short for Frankenstein) and we read to him, write to him, and teach him his ABC’s and numbers.
He has kind of become a member of our class…the kids tell him “goodbye” when they walk out the door at the end of the day. He has also given our class a sense of responsibility because he takes the role of class keeper who keeps an eye out for hard-workers and good friends.
I recommend painting a face on your family pumpkin and give him a role or two that might encourage your little ones to take ownership of their chores or homework. 🙂 Enjoy!
A friend of mine and retired Kindergarten teacher named Joy helps me in my classroom and has introduced me to one of many of my new favorite things!
A NAPKIN BOOK…. I mean, how many fun seasonal and themed napkins can you find at dollar tree or even leftover from birthday parties of ages past?!?
All you need to do is make labels with a chosen title and a space for your little “author” like “By ___________” and stick it on the front….. Unless you find an awesome napkin like Joy found that says “Boo!” which is the title of our frist napkin book.
Then print a fun sentence that coordinates with the book like “Boo said the __________.” multiple times on a single page, Cut it out, and staple it inside the napkin.
To make it that much more fun, Joy found Halloween themed stickers and that is going to be the illustration of each page of the book.
She even made a legend so the kids will know how to write the words in the free space of their sentence.
I love love this activity and will be making lots of books like it 🙂
I have so many updates to share, but most require pictures that I haven’t had time to take yet. BUT, as I plan weekly activities for my kindergarteners I will be sharing them here…. which means more resources for you at home.
Here is one simple writing activity idea and “I can” printable:
I am teaching the sight words “I can” in my classroom right now, but you can adapt this to whatever you are practicing at home because it is such a simple template.
When your little one is ready to learn words by sight, you will use activities like this to encourage your little one to have fun practicing writing the formation of the letters in the word. Here your little one would write it in each color and then draw a picture of something he/she can do.
If you have a preschooler, you might work on one simple shape like a circle, letter or number. If you have a Pre-Kinder you might work on your little one’s name. If you have a Kinder, you might start working on their sight words when the list comes home from school or work on their middle/last name. You don’t have to put it in a word document either….freehand the color words and model the first row for your little one.
Hi! It’s Casey, stopping by from Kidspired Creations once again! My husband and I have recently discovered the game Bananagrams and it has instantly become a family favorite! Even my boys (5 and 2) love to play as well… they just play with a different set of rules… Mommy Teacher rules!
If you are not familiar with Bananagrams, it’s a banana-shaped bag filled with Scrabble tiles and, like Scrabble, there are tons of the most frequently used letters in the alphabet (i.e. vowels) and several of the less frequent ones. This makes building words easier than when you just buy a single pack of 26 letters from the kid’s section at a store because you are able to make words that have double letters, or several words that use the same letters at once. As you can probably imagine, there are endless ways you can use these tiles to work on basic reading and spelling skills.
One of the building blocks to learning to read is being able to break words into syllables. As expert readers, we do this au.to.ma.tic.al.ly when we come to a long word, but we are able to do this because we were taught this skill. I notice myself doing this when I am typing out a long word in an e-mail quite fre.quent.ly.
Refresher course: what is a syllable? A syllable is recognized by the presence of a VOWEL SOUND in a word. For instance, the word “baby” has two syllables (ba.by) because of the presence of the long “A” and long “E” sound in the word. Be careful, some vowel sounds are hard to hear, like the “schwa” sound in the word “table”/ˈtābəl/. <-That upside down e is called a “schwa.” It sounds like “uh” and YES it’s a vowel sound. But, I digress…
My oldest son, James, has already mastered sounding out/reading simple CVC (consonant/vowel/consonant) words like “cat,” and bigger compound words like “bedroom” (Jess teaches about compound words here), so now I am moving on to larger polysyllabic words (words with more than one syllable). These words will be easier for him to read if he separates them into different syllables and reads them individually, but first, I need to teach him how to count syllables.
Clapping out syllables is a great way for kids to be able to HEAR the number of syllables in a word: BED (clap) ROOM (clap). I suggest starting off with simple compound words (cupcake, doghouse, rainbow) because they are made up of two monosyllabic (containing 1 syllable) words, thus it is easier to hear the separate syllables.
Another great way to count syllables is to use objects such as pennies to represent each different syllable. This helps kids to be able to SEE the number of syllables in a word: cup.cake = 2 pennies. Point to each penny as you say each syllable separately.
James found objects around the house
that only have 1 syllable:
car, ball, shoe (though it’s really a slipper),
cap, rock, dice, car (again)
You can also teach your child to FEEL syllables by having him place his hand under his chin as he says the word slowly. With each syllable that he says out loud, his chin will make his hand move down. The only problem with this is that some sounds (like the schwa) do not make your chin move, so when I say “table” while teaching this technique it sounds more like “tay-ball”… I over-exaggerate each word and make funny faces when I say it.
When your child has begun to understand the concept of syllables, you can start visually breaking down words into syllables by using the Bananagrams tiles. Start with words that have short vowel sounds like “exact” (ex.act) or words that are monosyllabic that become polysyllabic when you make it past tense such as “started” (start.ed).
Just for fun, I broke down the word “hippopotamus” because our dog’s name is Hippo. Notice how James sounded it out “hippo.pot.[long A].mus” and I did not correct him. Once he put the word together he automatically fixed the “long A” to the schwa sound. Give your kids a chance; they might surprise you with the things they can figure out without Mommy’s help!
Thanks, Jess, for letting me hop onto your blog! Please visit my Kidspired Creations blog for affordable, customizable and kidspirational art! I also frequently post DIY projects and party ideas! Also, please stop by my personal blog about My Kidspiration and all the hilariousness that comes with raising two boys and a baby girl!
Sean Patrick has more than one “Favorite” book. In fact, the other day I bought a book and before I read it to him he said, “Mom, read me this one. It’s my favorite book.”
So, as you can tell, he isn’t very credible if you are to ask him about his favorite book. But, I can pretty much guess his favorite book(s) based on the ones he asks me to read to him OVER and OVER again 😉 I actually enjoy teaching him new things each time but sometimes I find a gem in the book that makes for the best teaching experiences. And here is one example:
We have been reading “Curious George Makes Pancakes” a lot lately.
I always seem to look for extension activities but the following page jumped out at me because it provided the perfect set up for sequencing and retelling.
I made a copy of the page that showed how George made the pancakes (onto a piece of cardstock that I keep handy in my desk).
Then I split the page into the four steps (yikes I need a new color ink cartridge!) so that I could display them in our kitchen when we make pancakes:
When SP is a little older I will use them as sequencing cards (to observe his thought process as he orders the steps), and as retelling cards to tell me how to make pancakes.
Hope this inspires you to find extension activities in your little one’s favorite books. If so, please share on my fb page!
