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.