Back to School Freebie!

Since I love spending my summers obsessing over school, I've made lots of word walls to use with all the themes in my classroom. Here's a great one to start the year- school words in Spanish. There are 20 total words.

Click here to download.

Never fear, dual language teachers, there is also one in English!

Click here to download.

If the back to school bug hasn't caught you yet, enjoy the rest of your break. Even if it has, get a little relaxing in before you head back!

What's in an ABC Center? Alphabet Puzzles!

photo credit: mag3737 via photopin cc 

My district has several required centers for pre-k classrooms and most are the centers everyone knows and loves. Art, dramatic play, library, blocks, writing, math, science, technology. We also have a something called the ABC Center. Is that basically what it sounds like? (you may find yourself asking). Well, yes! It's a center designed to encourage exploration of the letters by focusing on just them. Sure, children are (or should be!) learning about the alphabet throughout the classroom and all during the day. This is just an additional way to ensure that children have great meaningful experiences with letters every day. 


So what goes in an ABC center? My first suggestion is something that is ubiquitous in early childhood classrooms: alphabet puzzles. Many look at that puzzle and see a few weeks of use followed by a covering of dust that grows each month, but this item can actually give you a lot of bang for your buck.


For example, you can start by putting the letters in a container and have them pull the letters one at a time from it to place in the puzzle. When they are finished, they put all the pieces back in the container. I like to start with an empty wipes container because they can't see what letter they're pulling out so it's very exciting and fun. Plus they're free! I guarantee you somebody you know can give you a baby wipe container.

Change up the container with your themes, with seasons, with holidays. Put them in a pumpkin in the fall, a basket in the spring, a dump truck when you're studying transportation, a big shoe when you're studying nursery rhymes. Find anything they'll fit in and go for it! It's an easy way to use that puzzle for all it's worth and since you are spending time talking about letters every day you will see those children start to say the names of the letters, think of words that begin with those letters, make connections with those letters, try to spell words with those letters.


Shari Sloane has some great ideas for alphabet puzzles, including one I'm excited to try out next year. She gets an alphabet die, one of the 30 sided ones with every single letter. Children roll the die and find that letter to put in the puzzle until it's full. My alphabet die is from an old version of the game Scattergories that was going in the trash at an old job. Always check the trash!


Put the letters into a feely box, bag, or empty tissue box and show children how to reach in and try to guess the letters based on how they feel before pulling them out to put on the puzzle. This is a great way to get children to observe the attributes of letters, which is crucial for letter recognition and formation. If I feel a straight edge, can it be an "o?" Why or why not? 


Get a container and mix an object or picture for each letter with the letter pieces. Children first put all the letters in the puzzle then match the objects or pictures and simply place them on top of the letters. It's not fancy, but guess what- your kids haven't seen a Lakeshore catalog; they don't care. It's fun, it's easy, and it's cheap!


Make some word cards to use with that puzzle. You can make them to match what you're learning or to teach high frequency words. Just remember not to choose words with any repeated letters!


Use a set of alphabet flash cards with pictures for each letter with your puzzle. Children pull a letter from the puzzle and match it to the card.


To incorporate writing, have children pull a letter from a container, write it in their journals or other paper, then place it in the puzzle. This is something I'd do after the class has had several months of exposure to the puzzle and to writing letters. I want them to have plenty of purely tactile experience with letters to set them up for writing. That said, when children are comfortable with writing letters this is a great way to get some fun practice.


If you want to get really snazzy, get a lowercase puzzle and an uppercase puzzle and mix up all the pieces in a container. Now students have to identify each letter as upper or lowercase before sorting it into the correct puzzle. 


Would you have believed there are so many ways to use a humble alphabet puzzle? I love items that can be used in multiple ways and levels and for that reason, alphabet puzzles score high in my book. The fact that any of these activities works for English or Spanish literacy is just icing on the alphabet cake!

Here are links to some of my favorite alphabet puzzles. (Apparently Lakeshore has discontinued the two I use most often, so maybe they are creating something new and even better.)

Foam puzzles like these are usually easy to find at dollar stores or bins at Target.

Melissa and Doug have great puzzles in English and Spanish and I have found all of these at Mardel:




-Spanish: http://www.melissaanddoug.com/Spanish-alphabet-peg-puzzles-educational-toys

-Spanish talking puzzle:  http://www.melissaanddoug.com/spanish-alphabet-sound-puzzle-wooden

-English: http://www.melissaanddoug.com/see-inside-alphabet-learning-puzzle

-English talking puzzle: http://www.melissaanddoug.com/alphabet-sound-learning-puzzle

Dice, Dice, Baby

Dice are so much fun! Pardon me, random number generators are so much fun! There are a bazillion different kinds to choose from and if you're like me you can't help but buy them all. (Look, green dice! Better buy them. These have hearts instead of dots! Better buy them. These are slightly larger/smaller/heavier/lighter than the ones I already have! Better buy them.)

I've seen so many great ideas for containing dice (random number generators) around the web and have tried a few out. I use the giant foam dice at the beginning of the year because they need to be able to touch each dot to count it, but later in the year we can use regular sized dice! (This activity and photos are from February of the past school year.) This opens up so many more possibilities to Pinterest-obsessed educators like myself.

I used some very small containers that I most likely bought at Dollar Tree and were most likely in the craft section. The lids are difficult to remove, which is a plus when a 4 year old is shaking it like her life depends on it. That reminds me- putting dice in containers adds a whole new level of motor skills to the activity. They can flail their arms back and forth with all their might, all in the name of mathematics!

Here are my random number generators in their containers. See how small those containers are? 

I recommend using containers with tightly fitting lids. I also tried another type of container with less success. These are probably easier to find and come with a lot in the package, but you'd need to glue the lids closed if your students are anywhere near as vigorous in their shaking as mine chose to be. Or you could just show them how to use them more gently. We'd already gone full shake so there was no going back for us!

There are infinite possibilities for how to use the dice, but here was our first activity which just so happens to be a math journal activity. I know a lot of folks are encouraged to use math journals in the early grades and a lot of those folks aren't sure how to fill those pages. In my classroom the answer is to fill them very simply. Teaching children to record their observations and data starts small but is a great advantage to them and their knowledge of math.

This activity was done in small groups with me. Some groups worked on drawing the dots then writing the numeral that went with that quantity of dots, while others rolled dice with the numerals and drew that many dots. Both of these end up with the same things written down, numbers and dots. I didn't show the children how to record their answers first, I simply said to record their numbers and dots in their journals. It was interesting to me to see how the children decided to draw.

That's really it. After introducing this activity with all my small groups I put several dice from my inappropriately large collection in the math center where children were free to repeat the activity on their own. It was a hit! The thing I enjoyed most about this activity was that it was a perfect set up for future games involving dice and recording data. Plus everyone loved it, so it was a win for all!

Construction Theme

We just finished up a month-long construction theme in my classroom. Here are some things we did to learn more about one of my favorite subjects- building stuff! I would say these are some of the "highlights" but really they're just the "things I managed to photograph."

We talked about the parts of buildings and structures and the children drew and labeled houses. They've been working on drawing houses basically all year, so most of them turned out pretty well. We do a LOT of labeling and it's a great way to add some print to any type of drawing or art project. This project was done in a small group with my assistant. This child is in a group who is working on writing and reading syllables. (Notice the hobbit-like windows of this house.)

One week was devoted to learning about tools, so we made a graph of our favorite tools. It's important to me that my students get plenty of vocabulary in English as well as Spanish, so I make sure to include as many thematic activities as possible during math (which is taught in English). For this graph the children drew a picture of their favorite tool and copied the word. When the children make the graph themselves they are much more likely to utilize the graph during centers and at other times of the day. I hung this graph in our construction center and they counted and compared the tools to their little hearts' contents.

Here are some closeups of some of the individual tools. We've worked hard on learning to draw this year and I'm very proud of what they're able to do now that we're 2/3 through the year.

Also during our week on tools was this ever-so-fancy project I've decided to call "draw, color, label, and cut." I got the idea from a colleague and discovered there's really nothing you can't draw, color, label, and cut. This activity is great for a bulletin board or other display and gets the kids excited about labeling and cutting (because they're just not excited enough about scissors already, right?).

By the way, I highly recommend giving your students interesting tools that they can actually use, like levels and tape measures. Every year my students L-O-V-E using levels with the blocks and end up checking random objects around the room to see if they are level or not.


Here are a few more random activities from the construction month.

Nuts and bolts

Locks and keys (hey, it's construction-y!)

Toy screws and hinges, which just happen to fit perfectly on the backs of our shelves

So there you have it, a bunch of jumbled ideas for learning about construction. Next up will be transportation, and I will be more mindful about taking photographs this time!

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!

Erasable Dollar Spot Love

After going 6 weeks of summer vacation with only one trip to Target, and that for necessities, I decided it was high time I check out the Dollar Spot. It's good to get there soon after they put out all the teacher goodies because those suckers go fast, plus that section can get a little disheveled after a few days. So really, I was being extremely proactive by pacing the aisles of Target today. Sure.

Has anyone ever told you to use page protectors as a reusable surface for writing? As in, stick a paper you want to reuse in the page protector then let children write on it using dry erase markers? It turns a single copy into an activity that can be reused over and over without extra ink or paper. It's a great idea for any grade level. It saves paper and makes lessons that can be repeated over and over. It also doesn't work so well, in my experience. I've read that it's best to get "the crystal clear or diamond kind," whatever those may be. I have about 400 page protectors that must not be crystal clear or diamond-y because I tried this and the children were rubbing those things like Annie scrubbing the floor of the orphanage trying to remove the marker. Since I have such a huge quantity of them I wasn't about to purchase new, more diamond-y page protectors, so I kept an eye out for something else I'd seen people use: write and wipe pockets. These are made of vinyl so they erase very easily, but not too easily- children can rub against the writing and it won't completely go away. They're also much sturdier than page protectors, so you don't have to put the papers on cardstock or laminate them.

The best thing about the write and wipe pockets is that if you look carefully, you can find them in the Target Dollar Spot! They aren't that expensive at teacher or office supply stores, but they're unbeatable at $1. Some of my favorite activities with these are inserting graphs, ten frames, write-the-room recording sheets, and roll'n'write games (I do letters, numbers, or shapes with this game). All these activities are great to introduce in a small group setting and then place in centers for independent use.

I love using these pockets because they are very enticing to reluctant writers. Especially at the beginning of the year, many of my pre-k children haven't developed the motor skills or coordination to draw pictures or write letters. This can really kill their confidence, and who wants to do something they don't feel confident about? Dry erase markers are FUN FUN FUN, so even my most cautious children are willing to give writing a try. Being able to erase easily and try again is also a draw for some of them. Any dry erase markers you can find on sale or clearance are obviously the best, but I also really like these from, you guessed it, Target Dollar Spot!

Okay, so maybe only one of these is from Target- the smaller ones on top. So long as they stay capped they last as long as the larger ones and they're an awesome size for little hands just learning to form letters. The markers on the bottom are actually from Staples and were on clearance for 25 cents, I am not even joking. I bought 16 packages! Crayola has some dry erase crayons that WORK and aren't too difficult to erase, so I use those also.

With so many great ideas for incorporating dry erase activities into your classroom, there's no excuse not to give your students this fun writing experience. And if you can get the page protectors to work, more power to you!

Bottle Cap Letters

Like many of you, I've seen some great ideas for using bottle caps in the classroom. Something strange about me- I don't regularly drink anything that comes with plastic lids. Weird, right? Fortunately my very sweet assistant was more than willing to stock me up on lids, so I have a nice collection. A nice collection... that I've had for about 7 months. When I realized I've been wanting to do this project for nearly a year I decided it was high time. When I was finished and discovered it only took about 4 minutes, I felt a little silly for waiting so long. In conclusion, don't be like me- go ahead and create a set of bottle cap letters for yourself today (or as soon as it takes to collect 26 bottle caps)!

Here was my original inspiration. This is from a great blog called Growing in Pre-K created by Eilis Meyer. She has a LOT of brilliant ideas, but the one I'm focusing on today is what she calls her Caterpillar Alphabet which is made from Gatorade lids.

image: http://www.growinginprek.com/abccenter.htm

Things I love about hers: A) the uniformity of the lids; B) the size of the lids; C) the great alphabet stickers. For my own, the lids I have access to are smaller which is fine, but it would be nice to eventually do something with the larger caps. And as much as I like the 3D alphabet stickers I know these are not feasible in my classroom where they'll get peeled off within a week of hitting the shelf. So I decided on my own plan of attack for these guys, which I'm sharing with the world! The best part is that they really do take 5 minutes or less. 

Step 1: Gather your lids. Drink 26 bottles of your favorite beverage, have a coworker glug down some water for you, steal from your children, whatever it takes. 

Step 2: Get some alphabet stickers. I'm using these that I bought in the Target Dollar Spot last year. These are the perfect size to fit inside the lids to bottled water or 20 ounce bottles. The main thing you're looking for is that they will fit inside your lid. I chose to put them on the inside instead of the top because I think they will be more durable this way- less of a chance to pick them off. Only time will tell if this is accurate!

If you don't hoard collect stickers, these are available right now at Target. For $1! There are 5 pages in each of these packages which is a pretty great deal on shiny letter stickers, if you ask me.

 Step 3: Have your rabbit photo bomb the shoot and toss some of the lids aside.

 Step 4: Stick a sticker for each letter to the inside of the lid. I'm telling you, it really is that easy. Ta-da! You made a beautiful set of bottle cap letters.

If you're teaching in a bilingual classroom, feel free to add the fancy letters. You might need some slightly smaller stickers for Ch. Don't freak out about that letter being slightly different than the rest. Or do, who am I do judge.

Seriously, how easy was that?! Congratulations on making an easy tool you can use for literacy activities galore. Go ahead and make tons of them for spelling names or words, or make some with numbers for math activities. Then pat yourself on the back for paying a few bucks on these instead of pawning your worldly belongings for something similar from a teacher store!