St. Patty's Day

I'm normally not much for St. Patrick's Day, but I do like to do a little activity about it at school.  Since it falls on a Saturday this year I don't have to worry about wearing green (or keeping the kiddos from pinching kids who didn't wear green)--hooray!  We are going to do a little writing activity though.  I found this from the Teacher Wife and I knew it would be perfect.  Since I only see my kids for ~45 minutes we are going to skip the craft part of it and just do the printable. 

Anyways, I'm so thankful to Lindsey for offering this free activity.  It sure did help with my St. Patrick's Day planning!  :]  Click the picture to head over to her blog and snag the download for yourself. 

image via the teacher wife

Happy Tuesday!  Did everyone have a great weekend?  Mine was great...because it was three days!  I motion that every weekend is a three day weekend.  Who's with me?  ;]  And does anyone have a great idea for St. Patty's day lessons?

It's magnetizing!

Just last Friday my 1st grade kiddos finished up a unit on magnets.  I love teaching science at this age because they are so curious about everything!  This magnet unit was a great way to bring in some hands on science practice.  None of these lessons are super intense--all I'm looking for is a way to teach the content, but still keep the main focus on learning English.  So anyways, enjoy these magnet lesson plans and please let me know if you use them!  :]



I hope you've all had a pleasant Monday.  My Mondays are never that bad...Tuesday is when the weekend hits me and I feel exhausted all of the sudden.  Am I the only one, or do any of you guys deal with that Tuesday sleepiness, too?

Random notes:

1) I bought a Kindle Fire a couple weeks ago and I really like it.  So far I've read three different books on it.  For a long time I thought I'd never get one, but I like that it's an eReader and a tablet.  Anyone else biting the bullet and jumping on the eReader bandwagon?

2) Today and tomorrow are parent/teacher conferences!  My first ones ever...can you sense the little bit of nervousness?  :] 

3) Moe's Monday is the bomb.com.  Five dollars for a burrito, chips, and a drink?  Score!

Ok, enough randomness.  Have a marevelous rest of your Monday!  :]



Learnin' Letters

I have one small group of Kindergarteners that I serve each day after lunch.  They are quite a fun bunch, but WOW, they have a ton of energy!  *Side note: I'd like a little dose of their energy each morning!*

Anyways, with getting them after lunch, we barely have 30 minutes together before I have to take them back to class.  I had these grand ideas of doing all of these activities with them, but the reality is, if it can't be completed in less than 30 minutes, we probably won't do it. 

The main thing I'm working on with my littlest ones is letter recognition.  Each week we work on a different letter: we've just recently finished Q, R, and S, so on Monday we will start with T.  I've found some really good letter resources on the 'net and I'd love to share them with you.  :]  Enjoy, and let me know if you have any great resources you use!  I'm including stuff from when we did R last week.

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Day 1: Watch Starfall video about the letter R and then talk about it using our pocket chart in the classroom.  Then we will go to our seats and do the writing worksheet from the Starfall website.  These are all great worksheets!  Once they finish the front, I have them "read" it to me...all very simple sight words (is, for) and pictures.  I find being able to read a page to me, even if it's mainly pictures, is a great confidence boost for my kiddos. 



Day 2: Start class by remembering the sound the letter R makes.  Watch YouTube video from "Have Fun Teaching."  In all honesty, these videos are super annoying--but since it's so repetitive the kids can sing along and they really start remembering the sound of R and words that begin with that letter.  Then we brainstorm words that start with R and make chart to go with it.  Each kid them picks some of the words to write and illustrate. 

Day 3: I like to start each class with a super short clip, so normally on day 3 I'll start it off with a short Sesame Street song (this week we watched a song about "Sammy the Snake").  Then we finish writing our words and illustrating them.

Day 4: Picture scavenger hunt!  We find a pictures in a magazine that start with the letter R and make a collage.  Very fun, and then we get to see it hanging up in the classroom!

Day 5: On day 5 I like to finish off the week with some games.  We play a version of Mother May I about letter sounds/words.  I call a kid, and they have to say a word that begins with a certain letter.  We can either just do "R" words, or we can go through the alphabet.  If they get it wrong or can't think of one, they go back to the beginning.  They love this game!

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So, those are my Kindergarten plans that I tweak each week.  This particular week we only had four days, so I'm not doing the day 5 lesson.  We're going to finish off the week with our picture collage, instead.  These lessons are very simple, but the letter practice is so beneficial for my little Kinders.  Does anyone else have any favorite ways to teach letters?

Happy weekend!  :]