Super Sleuths!

Here is a neat idea for a center. Students can practice different skills by looking for letters, shapes, words or numbers on each page. Make a book or separate books with pages including all letters or all words. etc. At the top of the page put a question such as "Can you find the letter F
on this page?" Make a pretend magnifying glass out of a pipe cleaner and have kids look for whatever you choose for the page.

Word Pics

Assign your kids words or let them choose their own word wall word and have them write it down on a blank sheet of construction paper. Then have them find magazine pictures that begin with the beginning sound of each letter.

Word Wizards!

Here is a fun idea. Get a fly swatter and cover it with white paper. Put sentences on your overhead or document camera. Choose a Word Wizard from your class and hand them the fly swatter. Tell them a word to magically pull out of the sentence. If you place the fly swatter up against the screen on the word you choose and slowly pull it away right in front of the screen, it will look like it is floating in the air. It's cool and it really works! You can have kids do this with anything like shapes or numbers!

Writing Picture Rubric

Give your students and their parents a visual representation of the stages of drawing and how they will be graded. This way students can refer to the rubric as they are working, and parents understand what their child is striving for.

Goodnight Gorilla

Here is a neat project centered around the book Goodnight Gorilla. After reading this story have your kids make this neat project using a meat packing tray, yarn and animal pictures. You can have them write a journal entry about what the animals do at night.

Key Project

Here is a neat writing project. Give your students a key-shaped cutout and ask them to decorate it any way they want. Then ask them, "What does your key unlock?" Have them write about it!

Sentence Builders!

Now that you have added many words to your word wall, pick a student each day at calendar time to come up and be a Sentence Builder. Let them wear a hard hat and make a sentence from the words on your word wall. You could have them write the sentence down and put it in a binder book so the kids can read it!

The Name Game

Here is a fun thing to do when kids are learning their letters. Take the letter of the day and have kids exchange the first letter of your name with that letter. For instance, if your name is Miss Martin, and you are learning the letter c, the students will call you Miss Cartin that day.

Tattle Tales

Here are some more ideas for tattling in your classroom. Post a picture of the governor or anyone else that you choose and when students want to tattle, ask them to go tell the governor. Another idea is to have them whisper their tattle into a bag and tell them that you will listen to them later. Also, have kids write their tattles in a tattle tale journal. See Terry Tattle Tale in the posts below too!

Egg Match

Write word family words on plastic eggs and give each child one egg. Put music on and have your kids travel around the room and trade their eggs. Stop the music and have the kids pair up and read each other's eggs. Repeat as many times as you want. Also you could make word family pairs of eggs and have your kids find their rhyming match when the music stops.

Jenga!

Write word families or math problems on Jenga pieces and have your kids play Jenga while practicing valuable skills.

Balloon Volley

Here is a fun activity similar to the snowball fight. Blow up balloons and write words or math problems on them. Turn on music and have kids try to keep the balloons in the air. When you turn off the music, they stop and pick up a balloon. Have them walk around and read three other people's balloons. Then put the music on and start over.

Hair Project

Here is a cute writing project! After reading This Is My Hair by Todd Parr, have your kids think about what their hair would look like in different situations and write about it. Then use a circle cut out and yarn to make themselves with their wacky hair.
These say: This is my hair in the wind. This is my hair at a concert.

The Crayon Box That Talked

This is a neat story about a box of crayons in which the colors do not get along! Find out what happens when a little girl wants to use each color in her drawing. This book is great to read to your class when talking about differences and getting along with others. When finished reading the book, have your kids choose their favorite color and make themselves into crayons!

Mystery Word

This is a fun idea to get your kids to practice their chunking skills. Put mystery words on sentence strips and slide them into the mystery word envelope. As you slowly slide the word out letter by letter, students try to sound out the word and guess what it is. Also, have them look for words within the word!
Can you guess what this word is?? Penguin!
You can also make a Guess the Pattern envelope!!!

Book Buddies

Your students will have a great time reading to a book buddy! Introduce your class to your
book buddies and tell them that their buddies are excited to learn from them this year. Give the book buddies names and put them in your reading center. You can make it a reward by choosing kids that are doing good things that day and letting them pick their buddy to read with!

Snowball Fight!

Here is a fun idea! Write words on white paper and crumple it up into "snowballs". Let students have a snowball fight with the paper balls until you shout "freeze!" At this point they pick up a snowball and unfold it to read the word on it. Next they turn it back into a snowball and continue to play!

Snow Powder

Here is a neat product to use with your kids! If you use cold water to make the snow it feels real! Snow Powder comes highly recommended by Kindergarten teachers in our district. They use it as a center when they
are talking about Winter time.

Calendar Ideas (click on pics)

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Word Rings

A great way to help kids work with words is to make different sets of word rings centered around different topics such as, school words, Winter words, animal words etc. Hang the rings in your writing center and tell kids that they can take them to their table when they are journal writing!

Mystery Pictures

This is a neat way for kids to practice reading words. You can write their names or words they are learning on in white crayon on white paper and then randomly pass them out. Your students use water colors to reveal their words. You could use words from a unit you are studying or seasonal words. Please comment on your ideas!

Terry Tattle Tale

Are your kids constantly tattling? Tell them to talk to Terry! Have a stuffed animal available for your students to tell their troubles to. Discuss with them the difference between a serious issue which should be told to you and other things that they can tell Terry.

Claymation Station

A neat thing to have your students do when they first arrive in the morning is to make the letter you are studying out of clay. Just hand them a small ball of clay when they sit down and have them put their newly formed letters in an area called the "Claymation Station". This could be a table top covered in construction paper. You could also use different colored pipe cleaners depending on the season. Please comment on the different activities you have your kids do when they first arrive in the morning!

Smellobrate!

Here is a fun way to celebrate or reward your kids. Get different flavors of chapstick and when you want to celebrate something good, put some on the back of their hand so they have something sweet to smell for the rest of the day! Please post your ways of celebrating or rewarding your kids!

What are your favorite holiday books?

Please comment with your favorite holiday books. Two of mine are Snowmen at Night and
Auntie Claus

What are your favorite websites?

Here is a kindergarten wiki with favorites from teachers in our district. Please comment to this post anytime with your favorites!

http://techtif.pbwiki.com/kindergarten

A Gem of an Idea!

When your kids are journal writing have them use small glass "gems" to mark the spaces in between their words. Each time they write a word they move the gem behind the word in order to leave a space, and then write the next word to the left of the gem. Tell them that they are magic jewels and will help them be super writers!

How to post a link to a website

Here are the directions of how to post a link.

Welcome!!

Welcome to our new blog! My hope is that you will use this blog to share ideas with other kindergarten teachers across the district. Blogging is new for me so I am still learning how this works. Please feel free to post ideas and questions to this blog as often as you like!