Sunday, January 5, 2014

I love "focus" wands freebies!

I love using scavenger hunts for so many reasons.  First and foremost, I love getting the kids up and moving.  It gets their bodies and brains moving and movement adds fun!

I create scavenger hunts for all types of themes, because it allows students to practice the same skills while feeling like they are playing a different game.  I also love that you can use the same alphabet cards to play a number of games.

- You can use them for scavenger hunts.  Students can search for uppercase or lowercase letters.
- You can use them for memory.  Students can match uppercase to uppercase, lowercase to lowercase, or uppercase to lowercase letters.
- In a small group, you can hand out different letters to each student.  Pick the specific letters that you are working on and have students listen to words that you say out loud.  Students will listen to the word and identify the beginning sound.  The student with the letter of the beginning sound will hold up their letter.
-You can play the same game with the whole class.  Hand out the letters that you are working on and have students listen to the spoken word.  They will identify the beginning sound and the student with the matching sound will hold it up.
- In a whole class, hand out letters to each student.  Have students put themselves in order.  You can put the extra letters on ground and have students organize themselves cooperatively.
- Put letters in a circle and have students march around the alphabet.  You can play any song that you like and have students identify the letter in front of them when you stop the music.
- Students can match letter tiles/magnetic letters to the upper or lowercase letter cards.  We used "Pairs of Pears" letter tiles to match.  These letter tiles are only uppercase letters, so the students matched the uppercase letters to uppercase cards and then matched the uppercase letter tiles to the lowercase letter cards.
- Have students build sight words or their names with the letter cards.  We used "Pairs of Pears" letter tiles to match sight words and CVC words.  I wrote the words with a Vis-à-vis marker and the kids matched the letters.  You can use any sort of letter tiles, cards, or magnetic letters for students to match.
- The possibilities are endless!!

I have two new scavenger hunts for February.  One for groundhog's day:
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Groundhog-Day-Alphabet-Scavenger-Hunt-Upper-and-Lowercase-Center-Printables-1035998
One for Valentine's day:
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Valentines-Alphabet-Scavenger-Hunt-Upper-and-Lowercase-Center-Printables-1044562
Here are the focus wand freebies!  I made some groundhogs and valentine themed pictures to use as focus wands.  You can use them with my scavenger hunts or make your own activities to go with them.  Hope you enjoy them! 
 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bzdf4OqBvDfcMm1MTEM3ekhFNGc/edit?usp=sharing
 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bzdf4OqBvDfcMjVtNnNLVzkzdlk/edit?usp=sharing
 

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