Splash!

Two weekends ago, I was fortunate to attend Frog Street Press' 2012 Splash Conference. It's a mecca of all things pre-school, pre-k, and K, and it was a blast! I have several pages of notes full of great ideas I'm already working on to start off the upcoming school year, and plenty of books and websites to check out over the next few months.

I'll start with a great educator, Carolea Williams. You may be familiar with her products sold under the company name Teach Bright.  She has some awesome products for those teaching in an early elementary setting, but I never really looked closely enough to see how they worked. After seeing them in use I can tell you they are GREAT! The best part is that she isn't in it to get you to buy her products. She's perfectly happy to show you things she's done and how you can do them, too. (Now, if you can buy her stuff you should because all the activities include full color photos that all match each other AND are on cardstock!)

First up is an activity that uses photos from her Phonics Sorts book. (See how nice those pictures are? Obviously you can use any
photos/pictures/clipart you darn well please, but hers are just so nice.) WELL, one of the ways she showed us to use these is to get one of those small magnetic message boards from the Target Dollar Spot and put magnets on the cards. When you add the magnets you can use them all sorts of ways, but this way limits children to matching a few letters at a time which is great for beginning practice. And these boards are at Target right now! Just think of all the possibilities now that you've learned you can use these as tiny magnet boards in the classroom!

Another awesome idea she had was to create sorting mats that match your activity. These cards are from her book Animals, Food, and Clothes which are actually part of a series to teach the alphabet and beginning sounds, but look how easily the same cards can be used to make a completely different activity. These are just some of the food cards; again, any foods cards will do. I love how she uses the gingham squares to add a picnic-y feel.

And look what she uses for the cards-  a sandwich container! What an easy idea that will add so much to the activity. This can be used for any level. Children can start by sorting and naming the foods then move to writing the beginning sounds, creating a list of the foods in their picnic baskets, writing a story about the foods, or more. I can't wait to create some mats like this for different activities.

One of her biggest points was that when we're creating materials for center activities, we should maximize our efforts. This is something I agree with wholeheartedly- don't spend 3 hours creating something children will finish in 3 minutes! For example, with the picnic activity, you can switch out the food pictures so that children can complete it several times with different results. Here's Carolea's advice for creating your own materials- instead of making sets of 2 matching cards, MAKE 3! It's that easy! If you're up for it, make 4, 5, or 6. Her reasoning is that when you make a game that involves matching 2 cards, it's a one-shot deal. Of course, these are great for children to do over and over to gain automaticity with letter sounds or rhymes, but when you have more cards in your arsenal, it becomes a new game as often as you like. An example of this is rhyming cards. Instead of "cat" and "rat," make "cat," "rat," and "bat" and you'll be able to switch the cards out to completely change the activity. You can see how creating just a card or 2 more can make a huge difference in your prep time and the duration of center activities in your classroom. Once they children understand an activity, you are free to change up the cards from week to week without having to spend additional instruction time showing students how these work. Having all those extra cards also lets you differentiate instruction easily because some students can work with more cards, some with fewer.

Another great idea she has is to use craft foam for sorting. She'll cut it into strips and give children 2 strips if they're sorting into 2 groups, 3 strips for 3 groups, and so on. She also uses the craft foam to create mats that can be used for ANY matching activity- what a time saver! This is cardstock with the foam glued on, but she also does this in laminated file folders.

Using a mat like this gives children a concrete idea of how the cards should go together and lets them focus on the attribute you want (beginning sound, category, rhyming word) instead of spending time deciding where to place their cards. Know some folks who would benefit from that? Me too! When she uses the file folders, it creates a space for children to put their recording papers. She actually staples lots of the sheets into the folder and children pull theirs off as they finish, but children could easily use their own papers to record. The organization of this is something I think would help a lot of my children with recording what they've done because so many just don't yet have that level of organizational skills. This looks like a great stepping stone for them. 

Carolea Williams was absolutely bursting with great ideas and I'm so excited to use them in the upcoming school year. Visit her site to see all her great ideas- she updates her site from time to time with even more ideas to use in your classroom. More on other great stuff from the conference later!