Butterfly Craft Update

 

We have given one of our favorite paper crafts a freshen-up - providing you with more options and updated writing tasks. 

If you have this project from our TPT store, you simply go to your 'My Purchases' tab and re-download the new file - all the extra value for no additional cost.

These butterflies will help bring your classroom bulletin boards to life this spring! 

With the update, you now have 3 versions to choose from:

• complete - like a coloring page, no gluing
• one page version - all pieces for one student on one page
• traditional template version - print different sections on different colored paper

You can make a butterfly on its own, or attach a writing prompt along with the craft.

The 4 writing pages included are:

1. Butterflies can/have/are
2. Describe a butterfly
3. If I were a butterfly....
4. Butterfly words alphabetical order

Hop over to our store to find it:

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Craft for Kids, Spring

Cute Classroom Posters Set 8

We released Set 8 of our Cute Classroom Posters today! This set includes another 8 printable posters to brighten a drab spot in your learning environment with a cute picture and a simple, motivational message for your little learners. 

The posters include the following messages:

1. It's a new day!
2. You make our day better!
3. Let's do great things!
4. You're on of a kind!
5. Let's have a great day!
6. Let's get busy and learn!
7. You're welcome here!
8. You are special and important!
9. Do not give up!
10. Today is a great day to learn!
11. Hello sunshine!
12. We love to learn!

As well as the page size color posters, we've included a blackline set that can used as coloring pages. Students can use pencils, crayons, markers or paint to color them. Have a featured student each week in a spacil position on display - showcasing their hard work and providing a positive thought for the week!

For being a valued blog follower - today I want to share with you a free exclusive bonus poster!

Find it in Google Drive here on the blog: Each morning is a fresh start poster

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Classroom Decor, Posters, social skills

Free Farm Tracing Page

 

Over in our free coloring club library we have shared a little farm mouse tracing page with you.

Tracing pages make a great prewriting activity for preschool and kindergarten - and even first graders love them to consolidate their skills. Your students can use markers or crayons to carefully trace each line and decorate with watercolor, soft pencil or pastel. 

We recently shared a Little Farm Mouse action rhyme finger play for your learners too - find it over at TPT!

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farm, Free Teaching Resources, Tracing

Short Vowels in cvc Words

Our printable literacy game Farm Alarm helps you focus on short vowels while also:

• reviewing single sounds
• making and reading cvc words
• building foundational reading and writing skills

As your students say sounds, blend them, listen and recognize words and put them down on paper (albeit in card format) they are beginning to learn to write.

The game features page size game mats and letter tiles. We recommend printing the letter cards on colored paper to further differentiate the vowels as having a special role in words.

Students help the farm animals on their game board to make eight cvc words each. 

• play in a small group setting with a competitive element where students take turns to flip letter tiles and make words on their own mat
• use the pieces flexibly and have students make words in a relaxed learning center style
• encourage your students to verbalize as they point to each letter and assist them in hearing the words as they blend them to make a word - encourage them to say the first sound louder to assist if needed

As well as using the letter tile, you can ask students to write the letters with a dry erase marker.

Learners who are confident with reading cvc words could experiment with long vowel sounds - using the beginning and end sounds on the card as a prompt. This can be done on the card directly with a dry erase marker or project it onto your board and ask students to write on their mini whiteboard.

Find Farm Alarm in our collection of cvc resources!

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cvc words, farm, Learning to Read, Short Vowels

Friendship and Play with Starfish

If you're heading back to school after a break, you may like to remind students of some valuable social skills needed for school - like finding someone to play with at recess and lunch break. It seems easy for us, but for our sweet little ones in their first year of school - this can be particularly daunting and new. 

 

We have a free animated rhyming text Starfish Day that has an underlying message helping students with a simple structure for finding a friend to play with. Play this story for your students and encourage them to read with the text.

Break down the steps (just a suggestion, of course you can make up your own for your particular school context) that will help students find a friend and play successfully.

Another stimulus text to share could be Starfish Where Are You? by Barroux. This book has virtually no text, but is image-rich and perfect for class discussion and engagement. Talk to students about how the playground/yard can feel like the pictures in this text sometimes - so many people, movement and we can feel lost in the crowd. Finding our friend in the crowd can also be hard. Here you can help students learn patterns to make sure they can find their friend after eating lunch and heading on to play.

Brainstorm with students a list of things they can do at recess and lunch. Use the time to review school rules. After a break, this is particularly important as some students will need support to remember school routines.

Expect students to have a little chat about what they will do today - this reminder will generate excitement for new and familiar play. Talk about how important it is for everyone in the class to have a sense of belonging and to include each other in play. 

Create a class display to record all the play ideas! Each child can make a starfish and record one idea from the list you have modelled on the board. Once the display is made, point to the words in the sentence and read them together. Do this regularly over the coming days to reinforce reading skills. 

Re-read all the play ideas regularly to remind students that they have choices. When students are able to make choices they build independence and resilience. 

I hope your learners have fun coming back to school to be with their friends and to be immersed in the valuable work of play!

I'd love to share these display pieces with you today:

Find them in Google Drive: Starfish Quick Writing Craft + Display Word Cards

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Books, Classroom Displays, Craft for Kids, Friends, social skills, Starfish

Earth Day Art Project

Earth Day is almost upon us and we thought we'd share a new art project idea for you to complete with your learners. You can choose to have your students complete it step by step or use as a stimulus for them to create and generate their own art project.

The steps are all shown over in our Youtube video. Simply play it for your students and pause throughout for them to draw their own. To complete the drawing encourage your learners to use a range of mediums to add color 

• pencils
• chalk pastel
• watercolor
• markers
• oil pastel 

We recently added 2 new books to our home library - perfect for Earth Day!

Your planet needs you by Philip Bunting, and 

The gentle genius of trees. Also by Philip Bunting.

Do you have a favorite text to read for Earth Day? Hop over to Instagram and send me a message - I'd love to add more to my collection and teachers have the best advice!

To make things more practical for you, we've created a printable pack of the steps. Along with writing pages you students can follow directly on their drawing page in one of 4 styles. Find it over in our store.

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Art Ideas for Kids, Books, Directed Drawing, Earth Day

Writing Letters

Help students practice Alphabetical Order with our  Sound Street Letter Writing Activity Cards. Students will fill in the missing letters on each card.

Print these activity cards and laminate them - students can then use whiteboard (dry erase) markers to trace - a resource that you can use again and again!

Included is:

• lower case cards
• upper case cards
• blank cards plain (+ editable slide version - type your own letters)
• blank cards with guidelines (+ editable slide version - type your own letters)

Each card has 7 houses with a single letter in each. A variety of starting positions are included, so students learn alphabetical order from various letters. 

A set of streets with full letters are included to provide for student self-checking if needed or use as a display.

Our activities reflect our design principle of clean, simple, smooth and un-cluttered - so if you dislike "busy" resources, you will love our resources.

These cards make a great literacy center, small group activity or fast-finisher tub.

Find this engaging literacy printable for kindergarten and first grade, over in our store!

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Alphabet, Letter Formation

Spring Basket Craft

In our Coloring Club we have a spring basket one page craft for your little ones!

How to make a spring basket paper craft:

• print one page per student / child
• color, paint or crayon the pieces
• cut out the pieces - glue the handle and flowers to the basket
• use a craft knife to make slits in the basket (have an adult complete this step)

• use colored paper, scrap wrapping paper or origami craft paper to weave strips of paper through the basket

• use one color or combine different colored paper strips

These baskets will make a great addition to a spring bulletin board display. 

• consider enlarging the project onto bigger paper 
• accomodate helping students into your planning - this project provides valuable skills for fine motor development but will not be 'easy' for our little learners
• consider completing the project in stages to make it more manageable for you to assist

Some extra ideas

After completing the baskets, integrate them into other areas of your learning program before they go on display!

Equal Groups

• talk about what we can put in a basket
• how do people use baskets
• model making equal groups with the baskets or draw some quick pictures on your board
• find the total and record it as a math sentence

Play a guessing game

• hide something under the basket - a letter, number, word
• gives some clues - e.g. In the basket is a letter that comes at the end of the word drum

Get creative

• following your discussion about what can be put in a basket, encourage students to draw something
• encourage students to cut and glue their picture in their basket
• students can write about their basket too - encourage students to use your modelled sentence and complete the ending (write as a model on the board:  'In my basket I have a ...) 

We are bringing you a new free page each day this week - if you are not a member of our club, we'd love to have you! Find out more information over on the information page and let use know if you have any questions!

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Craft for Kids, Spring

One Page Craft

We'd love to welcome you to our newsletter community with a free owl one page craft! 

Find all the information on how to receive our free regular newsletter full of teaching tips, support, ideas and news of new resources for sale - (with special exclusive freebies too) over on the website!

Find more fun One Page Crafts HERE

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Craft for Kids, owls

Subitizing Non Standard Patterns to 6

Add some bunny-fun to your spring classroom activities with our new math game for subitizing non standard dot patterns to six.

It is fast to prep and engaging for your students to experience the repetition needed for subitizing. 

Players can work with a partner or small group to match numerals to the dots of their board, aiming for 5 in a row.

This file features:

• a teaching tips page
• a detailed instruction sheet
• 6 different bunny game mats
• number cards 1 to 6
• a worksheet color-in game
• cover page

As an alternative to the numeral cards you could use a dice and counters. Here students would be learning to match standard and non-standard patterns. 

Hop over to our website page to find this and more bunny themed resources!

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Math Center, Spring, Subitizing

Blends Boards - A Fast Prep Activity for Consonant Blends

Make learning to read and write words with consonant blends fun and practical with our activity boards. Students will make ccvc and cvcc words with the blends in the initial and final position of decodable words.

Students will add letter cards to the mat to complete 9 words on each card.

Perhaps allow your students to be playful with words by experimenting with nonsense words. The aim of the game is to read and write with blends - not learn new vocabulary - but the choice is yours. We've included a suggested 'real word' list if you need it! 

As students try out the cards in different positions that will encounter different combinations, sound-out and remake words - each time encouraging them to access their knowledge of sounds and letters. This is excellent reading practice!

Each board features a mixture of cvcc and ccvc words.

The consonant blends that come in the initial position in words, in this packet, include: bl, br, cl, cr, dr, fl, fr, gl, gr, pl, pr, sc, sk, sl, sm, sn, sp and st.

The blends in the final position in words, in this pack are: ct, ft, ld, lf, lk, lm, lp, lt, mp, nd, nk, nt, pt, sk and st.

After playing with several boards, your students may like to record some of their words on the recording page.

Find this and more of our Consonant Blends ideas and resources, over on our special website page!

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Consonant Blends, Literacy Center

Adjective Mini Lessons

We have some ideas to share with you to help teach adjectives to your kindergarten and first grade students. The mini lessons would perfectly follow a reading of our new finger play action rhyme Rabbit however they can also be used independently. Be flexible and incorporate them how you see best into your own lesson sequence. 

Our Rabbit rhyme finishes with the line:

He curls up tightly in a soft round ball.

Guide your students to an understanding that round and soft are adjectives - they help us know more about the shape of rabbit and help us visualize or perhaps make a personal connection when we read. The author has written these as descriptive words.

Mini Lesson 1 - Defining an Adjective

• define an adjective for your students
• help them connect adjectives and nouns
• use our printable poster or project it onto your electronic board
• read the sample sentence: This is an orange carrot
• ask students to suggest a few more words that describe the carrot instead of orange
• write the sentence on a board or chart and show students how you can replace the adjective - e.g. little - and it remains describing the noun - carrot

Mini Lesson 2: Using our senses

• tell students that we can generate more adjectives for a carrot by thinking about our senses
• if you have a school garden or vegetable patch you could let students explore carrots that have grown
• if appropriate, bring some fresh raw carrots into class for students to explore with their senses
• show students our poster (print or projected onto board) and use it to guide a collaborative brainstorm of adjectives for a carrot based on their sensory exploration

• record them on our second chart

• let students record their own adjectives on our worksheet or in their reading journals

Lesson 3: Revise and get ready for writing

• after a few days have a revision mini lesson
• ask students to recall some adjectives for a carrot
• record some on the class poster - this time in linear format to lay the foundation for sentence writing (left to right across the page)
• model how to use this idea list to support writing a sentence - point across the line of words, read them, select a few, see how they fit in an order that makes sense
• guide the class through collaborative sentence writing - Let's choose a few adjectives to include in a descriptive sentence about Rabbit's carrots
• vocalize as you write to model the steps you take as a writer to create a sentence - Rabbit has a capital because it it the first letter of the sentence etc

Mini Lesson 4 - Independent Writing 

• adjust your writing lesson for the age/stage of your students - it could be a sentence, paragraph or short descriptive passage
• before students write, model again some descriptive sentences 
• help students define their purpose for writing before they start - perhaps they are recounting the carrot they found in the school garden. They could be describing a carrot they have eaten at home. They may be describing the carrots that Rabbit has found in his garden in a creative, fictional way.
• in our printable pack we have included 3 line styles to cater for your range of learners, however this task could also be completed in a writing journal

Mini Lesson 5 - Display It

• after all this class discussion, talking and listening - provide a way for students to contribute to a classroom display of learning
• classroom displays help students revise and reflect back to prior learning for the weeks ahead - they may also make additional links to new lessons content and deepen their understanding
• in our pack, we've provided a quick craft (color, write, cut) that students can complete - these can be displayed on a classroom bulletin board or in their reading journals
• alternatively you may like students to freely create their own visual representation of their learning using paper and pencils 

Ongoing 

• as you read books to your class in the days and weeks following these mini lessons, pause, identify and discuss adjectives that you encounter or make connections to the discussions you had during this lesson sequence

If you would like the printables we used in these lesson ideas, you can find the pack over in our store. 

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adjectives, grammar, Spring