Its mail time!

I went to work with a kiddo in their home recently and the parents asked me to work on the skill of learning her address that day. I did some activities that day with what I had and then went home and made this for the next time that I went to their house. It is just an address packet with a place for their information and blank envelopes for them to use. One of the pages also has a list of addresses for the children to practice sending pretend letter to... however some of the addresses will get you a response. (Mickey's, Cinderella's, Kermit's Judy Blume's, and Sesame Street's) I laminated the address page and the envelopes and they are at the writing center for the children to practice with.

This packet is available on my tpt site for free.

spelling

I will come right out and proclaim that I VERY STRONGLY DISLIKE the traditional way of teaching children to spelling in America. I feel this way because it works for a small group of children and for the children that it does not work there is not many good alternatives that are used across the country. I am working with a kiddo right now (in a home setting) who is having a hard time with her spelling tests at school each week. I am not there often to help her so this is for a family to use as word work (I like a more hands on less paper word work in my classroom) I posted the packet to tpt and it is free. Many of the things have been done before or something like it, but this just has everything organized together.


In the packet there are 11 pages. I may someday use these as an option for word work choice during language arts. We will see. Right now I live in the land of crawling so word work is not much of a thought.


http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/My-spelling-packet

Letter Center

So, the last week has been one of the most emotional weeks of my life. I had a student die from the classroom that I had student taught in since August and I started a new job. With all of that stress I ended up sick... But thats ok... I am a stronger person for making it through the last two weeks... any my house does not look awful ;) I started thinking tonight about my Saturday morning and decided to make something. This is just my own version of something that has been done many times (sorry, little creativity left this week) however this is free for you to print off. Just click on the pictures and save off of that. If you want the files email me and I would be happy to send them. I found the font at: http://desktoppub.about.com/od/lessonplans/ig/Free-Print---Cursive-Fonts/Print-Clearly-Dashed.htm. I think I will be using this font a lot from now on because it is a great kid font and what is a better price then free right?

Here is my partially done example

Baking Word Families

I made this activity for a great little kiddo that I get the privilege to work with one on one. We are working on word families as an aspect of learning words. She loves pretending to cook so I thought the theme of baking cookies fit with that. I figured I would share with the internet words because sharing is a nice things to do ans who wouldn't want to share a cookie. They are $1 on tpt (because I used clipart I purchased). If you want any other word families let me know and I can add it to the pack I am selling on tpt. The current word families are:
at,  ail, am, an, eat, eep, ell, ice, ay, ing, in, ip, it, oat, og, oil, ool, op, ot, uck, ug, unk

Each word family has a cookie tray page and four cookies to be matched to the correct tray.



teachers pay teachers

clip-art from: scapindoodles.com

Compound words

I loved teaching compound words to my 2nd graders when I was student teaching. The school that I was at followed the Comprehensive Literacy Model, so we would a mini lesson with the class and then have the children do a guided assignment that worked on the skill. This was one of the guided assessments that the kiddos did for compound words. Before the lesson I cut out the hexagons on page 2 and attached 1 to the center of the hexagon on the first page. (I used small scrap-booking brads to attach them)  The children then spun the center hexagon to make compound words. The kids thought it was a lot of fun and it was nice to do something a little different then a typical worksheet.

I have complied the two pages on tpt for free. teacherspayteachers.com


*I did see an idea like this online someplace one time and that is were the concept came from*

Brown and Pink letters

WOW! I love brown and pink. Our wedding was brown and pink, our house has a lot of brown and pink, and why not add some letters to my classroom that are brown and pink. They can be used during this time of sweet... or any day! These are great for matching and any other fun stuff you can think of with letter. I like to do an activity were I hide the lowercase letters around the room and I have the uppercase letters at circle time. I tell the kids that the grown up letters have lost their little letters and we need to be letter detective to find them. We then think of what the little letter looks like to help us find it in the room. Then a child goes on the hunt. If they are having troubles they can ask from clues. Clues include asking for a hit of what it is by, asking a friend to write it in the air, having the class make the letter's sound, or for it to be drawn on the board. I love to think out of the box of ways to bring in letters to the classroom. The number one goal is for kiddos to fall in love with letters and not to despise them because they are thrown at them all of the time.

I have the letters all made up for you at tpt. It is free because I made them on my own so I don't have to charge for them because I did not use any clip art. Hope you have fun with them. I would LOVE to hear how you used them in your classroom.

Cute little gingerbread men :)

There are so many things that can be done with these cute little guys :) This is an activity that incorporates numbers, ordering, positioning, writing, and drawing. This is a great Christmas time activity or anytime you want some cute little gingerbread to join your world. It is $1 on tpt. 

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Gingergread-Men-Orders

clip art from: http://www.scrappindoodles.com

Details

Sometimes simple stories like "I got a new cat." are ok, however like many things, a sentence like that is a place to start and grow from. To help my kiddos in 2nd grade grow I did an activity with them about how to add details using Mr. Potato Head.
I have a large amount of Potato Head part that I have acquired over the years (black Friday, Disney World, and rummage sales).  The more pieces you have the more interesting this will be however a small amount of parts will work.
I divided the class into 4 groups and I gave each group a bucket of parts and one plastic body. I them gave them 3 minutes to create an interesting potato out of the parts they had. Once the three minutes was up I had one person from each group bring up their potato and set it on a table in-front of the class.  I then had the entire class join us around the table. I then had a member from each group explain to me what their potato head looked like. Once each group had gone I pulled out my potato head. He only had eyes and shoes on. I described him to the class. We then had a class discussion about why their potatoes were so much more interesting then mine was. We talked about how sometimes we write stories that do not have very much details and how they are not very interesting. The children then had the option to go work on adding details to the current piece they were working on or to write a story about the potato their group made.
After school that day I took pictures of the potato heads and wrote two different stories. The one on the bottom was about my potato and was a very simple story. The other story was about one of the potatoes. I then made this poster and put in up near the writing area in the classroom. Many children look bacvk at the poster as a reminder about details.