Speaking, language and listening

Language and listening activities provide an important foundation for literacy in early years education - and bonus - they are so much fun! 

I'm sharing lots of minimal-prep activities and writing action rhymes to support your program and help make your mini-lessons imaginative and playful.

Today I'm also sharing with you - over at TPT - some visuals to create speaking sticks or posters. 

A speaking stick, puppet or mask can help a reluctant-contributor to be brave and take a turn in a language activity. My personal teaching philosophy was always to wait for students to feel confident to share verbally when they were ready but to try various scaffolds or support along the way. All children are different but as you gain experience you will notice some similar characteristics and ways to support your language activities - try different strategies within a consistent, safe learning space for students. 

Just a few ideas:

• reducing pressure for students to take a turn
• making games short, fun and 'no big deal' (don't get overly congratulatory or too spirited when a shy student does particulate initially) 
• letting students play whole class games in smaller groups or pairs the next day
• creating a dress-up corner, puppet corner or putting these speaking-sticks out for flexible, open-ended and free play opportunities

Here is a language game to play with the sticks (or without) that will help your students be brave and ask for clarification. 

Tell Me Again

• have 2 students hold a speaking stick (for the first round the teacher can take one and lead)
• greet one another and have a conversation that includes a long list of things to remember - e.g. shopping items, going to the beach, preparing gifts for Christmas, cooking

• An example could be:
• Mel: Hello Sam, what are you doing?
• Sam: Oh hi Mel, I'm going to the beach, do you want to come?
• Mel: Yes, what do I need to bring?
• Sam: You need to bring a big warm towel, a bucket to play with, lots of sunscreen, a water bottle that you can refill and a big straw hat.
• Mel: So many things! I need help - can you say that all again please and help me remember.
• Sam: Sure, I can help. You'll need a towel, bucket, sunscreen, water and a hat. 
• Mel: A towel, a bucket...
• Sam: You'll need a towel, bucket, sunscreen, water and a hat. 
• Mel: A towel, bucket, sunscreen, water and a hat. 
• Sam: You got it!

Discuss with you class how the conversation went, how clarification was sought and how a list of items was summarised and repeated to help with remembering things!

This is just one language game of many I hope to share with you! Check this page regularly for for more ideas!

Your students may also like to create some conversation, kind words or a simple story using the 'said' page over in the Coloring Club! 

Don't forget to get the free sticks today - over at TPT!

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Oral Language

Tens in the Den

If your students are making the Bear's Den from back on this post here is a little minimal-prep math game you can play before they start writing!

It's called Tens in the Den and will help your students work with place value.

Tens in the Den

You need:

• counters in 2 colors
• den (use our page or a circle of paper)

To play:

• tell students: the den is quiet and dark, so close your eyes and scoop a small handful of counters from the dish
• put your counters in your den
• pink are worth 10 and green are worth 1, find the total
• students work towards finding the total of their den and can record their work on their math journal or on a whiteboard

Here the student has made 24. 

 

If you have students not ready for place value work you can play with a dice and have them build a set of ten. They roll and take single cubes from a dish until they reach ten and then trade for a ten block. 

I hope your learners have fun finding the tens in the den! 

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math warm up, no prep activities

Winter, Thanksgiving and Christmas Craft Writing Activities

I would love to share with you a more detailed look at a few more of the craft projects from One Page Crafts Pack 4. I first shared some with you back here.

If you haven't seen these before, my one-page crafts are projects your students can work on that take just one page of prep. 

They are:

• engaging
• combine scissor skills and creativity
• can be a stimulus for writing (papers included)

Lots of teachers tell me they love to enlarge them onto big paper (A1 here in Australia) or thicker craft paper. 

Use pencils, crayon, markers, watercolors or a combination of all of them to help students do their best work. 

Let's take a look at a few of the 20 projects included:

Christmas Candy Cane

Talk about repeating color patterns with your learners as they alternate red and white to complete the candy cane. An option without a face is included too! Why not add some glitter or smelly pens for extra sparkle. 

Hot Chocolate Craft

This cutie will get your class warmed up for winter! Add some cotton on the marshmallows or draw a mug design on the plain version for additional creative options. 

Santa Craft

This one is a favorite and combines several fine motor skills. Color or paint, cut the vertical lines and then roll them around a pencil for a curled beard! 

Writing papers accompany each of the crafts in this series which will help you turn a creative experience into a literacy session too!

Students could:

• write a word bank
• write a poem
• write a procedural text about how they made their craft
• write a sentence
• write a story 

Find all 20 crafts and writing paper pack over in our store!

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Christmas, Craft for Kids, Winter

End of School Year Gift

End-of-year student gifts have become a lovely tradition for many teachers, but it can be a task that takes additional time, costs you extra money and will chew into your planning time and thoughts. If you need something practical but fun I have an idea to share with you today. 

One end-of-school-year gift for a class I helped teach (job sharing on a first grade) was a Rainbow Paddle Pop (ice cream on a stick). 

The kids got an ‘early mark’ on the last day of school (we sat outside the classroom, in the warm Australian heat of the afternoon, gentle sea breeze blowing 2 minutes before the end of the school day). We talked, enjoyed an ice cold sweet treat and waited for the final bell of the year together. 

It was perfect. The gift from the teachers to the students was 

• enough 
• an experience
• a final moment as a class community
• something we had not done before
• waste-less (cardboard box, paper wrapper, biodegrade-able stick)

The best part was the kids absolutely loved it and I hope many of them remember it as much as I do. 

We've all had a big few years and teachers especially. Take an honest look at your to-list as we approach the end of the year and edit some of the time-consuming or stressful tasks you've created for yourself. How could you could you better approach some of your hopes with something equally as significant for your class community but less intrusive on your energy.

Whatever you do for the end of the school year or holiday celebrations with your students, do so knowing that you have worked hard this year, your work is appreciated and that you are enough. 

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End of School Year

Bears in the den

Have you used the All About pages in our Pond Coloring Club? They provide a consistent framework for helping your little learners begin to write or plan informational texts. 

Here is one for bears! 

Read some books as a class to research information on grizzly bears. The National Geographic website is always an excellent source for children too.

Ask your students to recall some information you found as a class and do some collaborative writing. Record a few simple facts that your young learners can practice reading. They can then copy some facts down on their page, retrieving it from your modelled writing chart or encourage them to go back to the books and website and find more to write about. 

After writing your students could combine their pages for a class book about bears or put them on display to celebrate their developing writing skills. 



Also in the Coloring Club today we have a quick craft template for integrating with your work work. Your students will write words in the bear's den.

Focus on words that include the -en family and make a class chart or sound-them-out on your board. 



Encourage your learners to find more words for bear to put in his den!



Here is a little no-prep game to play with your en words:

Bear's Noisy Den

• tell your students that bear is getting ready for a big sleep in the den
• because Bear will be in the den all winter long, he needs to finish eating all the food and tidy up, so it's cosy and neat for a peaceful sleep
• bear has found lots of letters in the den that are making sounds
• listen for the letter sounds and say the word, helping Bear to tidy them up
• (now sound out words for your students to listen and say):
• d-e-n
• h-e-n
• m-e-n
• p-e-n
• t-e-n
• y-e-n
• z-e-n
• th-e-n

I hope your students have fun learning about bears or other animals in the All About pages - if you have a request for a new page, be sure to let me know!

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Writing

Draw More Dots

Available to you in our free Coloring Club library is a page for your children to draw more dots before they color or paint. On each dice there should be 6 dots. 

Use it in a few different ways:

• your emergent learners - they will draw and count-on from the number already shown
• students beginning to work on addition strategies can role a standard die and find a picture to complete a 6 - e.g. if they roll a 3 they will find a dice that has 3 and draw the extra to complete the dice
• students working more flexibly with numbers can roll a 20 sided dice and decide how to distribute the dots across multiple pictures, making each total 6

Optional

Once complete encourage your students to color or paint to show the addends. For example, they will paint blue all the dice where 2 was added to make 6.



As well as being a coloring page you can slide this page into a plastic sleeve and use it with a dry erase marker to conserve paper in your classroom. 

If you're not yet a member of the Pond Coloring Club, we'd love to have you! 

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Addition, Coloring Page

Take Care

Today I want to remind you to take care of yourself this weekend! Teachers look after so many people through the week and get out of the habit of doing nice things for themselves. 

Here is a classroom poster to remind your learners next week too: Turkey Take Care Posters.

Your students can:

• take care with their work
• take care of each other
• take care of their classroom and learning materials

Make a list with them of all the ways they can show care in the classroom and remind them each day.

If you'd like more classroom posters to motivate and inspire your class, take a peek at our collection. The turkey makes a great supplement to Set 7!

A blackline version is included for coloring or painting. Print them 4-to-a-page to use as brag tags or take home notes and special notes to students. 

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Count more

 

One of the games in our Math Pack for Making 5, 6 and 7 is Seven Smilies. It requires students to count on from a number within 1-7 in the number frame and make a total of 7, seeing the part-part-whole relationship while building a set. 

Here are a few no-prep warm up ideas you could play with the class before you teach this concept. You can use them for the number 7, or any other number (e.g. 6, 10 or 12)

Clap more

• tell students you want them to clap more to make 7
• they will listen for your claps (count in their mind) and then clap the remaining to get to 7
• encourage them to count as well
• e.g. you do: clap, clap, clap and they do: clap (4), clap (5), clap (6), clap (7)

Move more

• play to the same format as Clap more, but have students jump, stamp or hop

Ordering 1-6

• the class sits in a circle with a giant dice
• take turns rolling the dice
• the first child to roll a 1 may stand first in a line (option: let them hold a number one card)
• continue until a child rolls 2 and then 3 through to 6
• encourage all students to watch the dice as it rolls and help their peers

Say a Subtraction rhyme 

I just wrote this one for you, students can hold up 7 fingers and remove one on each count, backward from 7 to 1

Seven little wombats

Playing in the sun,

From high up in a tree

A gumnut fell on one.

That little wombat

Cried all afternoon,

So we put him in a rocket

And sent him to the moon.

Have fun with numbers today - I'm sure your students will love the hands-on math games in your groups or workshop! 

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math warm up, no prep activities, numbers to ten

Winter Mouse Art Project

With December quickly approaching I wanted to remind you of a whimsical winter mouse that your students may love to draw to bring some Christmas cheer to your classroom!

Printable steps and writing papers are now available for this project in my TPT store!

I first shared it with you back in 2014 and you can still find the step-by-step photo directions to draw over on this post.



Encourage your learners to make their art work unique by drawing more in the background. Perhaps:

• the ground
• the sky - stars, snow, sparkles
• some winter accents - a tree, a gift, a star

If your children love drawing and creating picture art projects keep my Directed Drawing page bookmarked and check regularly for new additions! 

If you're not yet on my Newsletter Super Fan list, I'd love to have you with me so I can send you more ideas for winter and drawing!

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Art Ideas for Kids, Directed Drawing, Winter

Butterflies and Symmetry

Your students and children will love making this 3D butterfly from the page in our Pond Coloring Club today! 

They will color or paint before cutting and gluing it together. There are lines to trace, dots to count and you can discuss symmetry as they complete the wings. 



Why not take the opportunity to:

• read some books about caterpillars 
• research butterflies
• go outside and observe things in the air - talk about things that move and things that float - let students do a 15 minute observation and count the things they see moving or floating 

If you're not yet a member of our club, we'd love to have you! Find out all about it on the website. 

If you would like your students to explore symmetry with more math experiences, you may also like our pattern block activity cards. They will arrange shapes to make a design with a line of symmetry.

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Craft for Kids

Making 5

Here is a low-prep math game for building fluency with numbers and recognizing  combinations that make 5 for early addition.

You just need (per student):

• 2 dice
• a whiteboard or scrap paper
• pens

Challenge students to roll the 2 dice and record a tally mark for every total of 5 they make. 

Option: have students work in pairs and have one student monitor the rolls for accuracy and switch roles after each 5 is scored.

Option: play in pairs and the first to make a tally of 5 is the winner. 


Extension: include a 'difference of 5' roll, so if a 6 and 1 are rolled, a tally mark may be recorded. 


Alternative: if you have the shape card printables from my latest Math Pack, you could use the 5 arrangements as score cards. Each time a 5 is rolled, a counter can be added to the shape. As well as being a scorecard, and engagement tool, your students will get additional exposure to the part-part-whole combinations that make 5 as they see their scorecard progress. 




Further develop your students sense of the number 5 with the activity cards Make 5 in the Hive (also in the math pack). Your learners will add additional dots to the hive and record the addition. 







I'd love to share more ideas with your for math and number with my email newsletter - you can hop on the list over on the website. It's free and you can cancel anytime, no worries at all! 

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Addition, no prep activities, numbers to ten

Double Letter Endings - 5 Picture Books to Read

If you have a focus on double letter endings in words in your reading or writing program you may like to choose a book to complement your study for shared reading time. 

As you talk about the front cover and title you may ask your students if they notice what is happening with the letters in a focus word of the title - e.g. this story is called The Emperor's Egg. Let's look at the word egg. What can you see happening with the letters? That's right, 2 letter g's are making one sound - g! 

Here are 5 books I have today that would be great for double letter endings!

The Emperor's Egg by Martin Jenkins - gg

Mr Huff by Anna Walker - ff

Choo Choo Clickety-Clack by Margaret Mayo - ck

The Sweetest Egg of All by Helen Milroy - gg

The Tall Man and the Small Mouse - by Mara Bergman - ll

You could also:

• ask students to look and listen throughout the story for more words that feature double letter endings
• leave the books in the classroom library with a magnifying glass (for fun) ready for students to search for all the double letter endings and more
• learn the action rhyme Rabbit with a mini lesson on double letters

If you love building sound and word walls in your classroom to help create a literacy-focused space, our new word wall pack for double letter endings will engage your students and provide for endless games, activities and word play!

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Books, Word Work

Birthday Cake Drawing

Let's draw a birthday cake! What a fun activity for your students to do on the special day of someone in the class. You could also fold a stack of paper and make a batch of ready-made birthday cards to distribute to students throughout the year.

Birthdays are so very special in the first years of school. For many children they are having parties for the first time that they can vividly remember, they are learning to make friends and celebrate with them and they are experiencing their developing sense of identity and what makes them unique as an individual. 

Taking time to acknowledge the importance of a birthday to a five or six year old can give rise to a range of different social and emotional learning opportunities and to build class community. Make even a few minutes available on the day closest to a child's birthday and let them share with the class, if they are comfortable and celebrate. 

It will vary depending on your school context, but it could be as simple as saying, We're so glad you get to spend your birthday with us at school today, we're going to make sure you have the happiest day. Because it's your special day, would you like to sit on the special spot / use the glitter pen / have this card / tell us about your morning / tell us what sort of cake you're having / tell us how old you are now / listen to us sing Happy Birthday / share something you'd like to share. 

If you've made a set of class birthday cards you can make a routine of giving one (signed by everyone in the class) to each student on their special day.

If you'd like to do this drawing as an art project, or to make birthday cards, there is a free worksheet page with the steps outlined over in the drawing category of the Pond Coloring Club! Learn more about how to join on the site - it's really easy!



Encourage your students to add extra details to personalize their art project too.

Here is a little video to help guide your students if they need it, you can pause after each section. 

You may also like to:

• have a display of student birthdays
• make cards for summer birthdays
• do a candle finger play

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Art Ideas for Kids, Birthday