Showing posts with label sight words. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sight words. Show all posts

Thursday, January 14, 2016

Penguin Palooza!

It's time for penguins, penguins, PENGUINS!!! Penguins are one of my favorite animals. Whenever I look at them, I can't help smiling :)
A bunch of  The Primary Pack has gotten together for a Penguin Palooza! Join our penguin hop for freebies, ideas, and a giveaway with All Things Penguin! All this penguin cuteness may send me over the edge.

I'll start out with some penguin freebies!

My daughter is a little bit obsessed with "Go Fish". She loves playing it over and over and over. This can get quite tedious, except that this means she is practicing her sight words (or high frequency words) over and over and over! Knowing that she is getting so much exposure and practice with her words, washes the tedium away!
She does a great job with her sight words, so I wanted to move into some CVC practice. I wanted her to really focus on sounding out the words, so I wrote the word on each card with a different fish. She gets no picture help on the card, so she really needs to focus her energy on sounding out the word. What does this have to do with penguins? Well penguins eat fish!
My daughter brought Penny Penguin into the game, too. Penny is a penguin that I made a few years ago out of a Cascade container. You can see more about her here.
This penguin has had so many uses. We feed her letters, words, and numbers. She loves counting and has eaten many goldfish. I created a fishing game with a magnetic fishing pole to use with Penny Penguin. You can get see the game and get a  free copy here.
When playing "Go Fish", Penny Penguin gets to eat all the matches. To be able to win "Go Fish", each player has to read the word on each set of matches before Penny will eat them. This gives another opportunity for your kids to reread the words. Plus, they just love feeding the penguin.
Get your own free copy of "Short Vowel Go Fish" here.
I have one more freebie for you! This is an Arctic Animal Even & Odd Pack.
Kids can identify numerals 1-40 and sort them by even and odd numbers. It is another way to disguise rote practice in a game format. Kids love the adorable clip art and have fun putting the animals into the arctic environment. I just updated this freebie. If you already own it, go back and re-download.
There really is so much fun to have with penguins! Who can resist these adorable penguin shapes?? Imagine a whole class with penguin headbands. That will definitely get them practicing their shapes! You can find the penguin shapes pack here.
My kids love "Roll, Say, Keep"!  I have a few penguin themed "Roll. Say, Keep" games to practice alphabet letters & sounds, and sight words. You can check them out here! We are playing with letter sounds below.
I like to get kids up and moving whenever possible. Scavenger hunts or "Write The Room" activities are a great way to get their blood flowing. Add penguin wands and you have an engaging activity! You can see my alphabet scavenger hunt here and get a FREE copy of the penguin wands here. 
Get creative with your letter cards! I used the letter cards from the alphabet scavenger hunt to go on a penguin march. Use it in alphabetical order or mix it up. Kids can march around the alphabet to some "penguin themed" songs (I like to use the soundtrack from Winged Migration). Stop the music and everyone picks up the letter card in front of them. Turn to your partner, give a penguin waddle, and say your sound!
I hope you found some fun ideas to use with your little penguins!

Before you go, don't forget there's a Penguin Palooza sale! Head over to TeachersPayTeachers and type 'penguinpalooza' in the search engine, or click here. You will find bunches of penguin resources marked down just for Penguin Palooza!
 You can find all of my penguin fun on sale from January 14-19.

It wouldn't be Penguin Palooza without a giveaway! You can enter on the link below.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Do the penguin waddle to head over to all the stops on this Penguin Hop. You will be fully stocked with penguin goodies for the cold winter days ahead of us!

Friday, May 1, 2015

Playing with Base Ten Blocks!

A few weeks ago I found an amazing activity on Step Into Second Grade with Mrs. Lemon's blog!  She used place value blocks to create her name and then found the value of each name. You can see her blog post here.  I knew right away that we needed to try this activity! I had kids ages 5-8 playing with the base ten blocks together, so I needed to be able to differentiate for their learning needs and abilities. We ended up working with letters, names, and sight words and it was a hit!!
We broke out actual base ten blocks, but you could have kids cut out paper blocks to create their names and glue to paper.  The kids had tons of fun using the blocks to create their names.
After creating their name, they wrote out the value of their name on a post it note.
The values were broken down by hundreds, tens, and ones.
After watching how each individual child used the base ten blocks to create the specific numbers, I thought it might be interesting to have two different kids to create the same name. It turned out really cool! We ended up with different values for the same name.
 
The next idea was inspired by an awesome kid! She wondered out loud if there was a difference between her real name and nickname. This led to more exploring!

We couldn't stop at names. My daughter (she just turned 5) wanted in on the fun. She knows all her letters and is starting to learn sight words, so we brought in learning that was appropriate for her, too!
 
She created her upper and lowercase letters. Then, she counted all the blocks that she used. I had her use the 'ones' blocks. After counting, she either dictated the number of blocks or wrote it herself.
Then, we brought out the "Greater Gator" and compared the amounts!
http://theprimarypack.blogspot.com/2014/10/greater-gator-diy.html
You can create your own "Greater Gator" or use popsicle sticks or just a symbol on a post-it.
Then, we moved on to sight words. All the kids created sight words and differentiated in the way they  recorded the value of the word.
 We loved all the fun that we had with base ten blocks! It kept kids ages 5-8 engaged and learning on their own level. I thought it was a huge success!  Thanks so much to Step Into Second Grade with Mrs. Lemons for the fantastic idea :)
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